
Rook l/V-?^/ 




ORATION 



ON THE « _ 

2.9 X 
Cto0 iDunDiPt anH JTiftitfl) annftitrsarp ^9^ 



LANDING 



PILGRIM FATHERS AT PLYMOUTH. 



21 December, 1870. 



BY 



HON. ROBERT C. WINTHROP, LL.D., 

'I 

PRESIDENT OF THE MASS ■! I ' ETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 



BOSTON: 

PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON. 

1871. 









jP, li. 1909 



/P 



/i'^'/ 






nPHERE can be no true New England heart 
which does not throb to-day with something 
of unwonted exultation. There can be no true 
American heart, I think, which has not found itself 
swelling with a more fervent gratitude to God, and 
a more profound veneration for the Pilgrim Fathers, 
as this morning's sun has risen above the hill-tops, 
in an almost midsummer glory, and ushered in, 
once more, with such tr,anscendent splendor, our 
consecrated Jubilee. 

When we reflect on the influence which has 
flowed, and is still flowing, in ever fresh and cease- 
less streams, from yonder Rock, which two centuries 
and a half ago was struck for the first time by the 
foot of civilized. Christian man* when we reflect 
how mightily that influence has prevailed, and how 
widely it has pervaded the world, — inspiring and 
aiding the settlement of Massachusetts, and, through 
Massachusetts, of all New England, and, through 
New England, of so large a part of our whole wide- 
spread country, and thus, through the example of 



our country and its institutions, extending the prin- 
ciples of civil and religious freedom to the remotest 
regions of the earth, leaving no corner of Christen- 
dom, or even of Heathendom, unvisited or unre- 
freshed, — we should be dead, indeed, to every 
emotion of gratitude to God or man, were we not 
to hail this Anniversary as one of the grandest in 
the calendar of the ages. 

We are here, my friends, to celebrate the Fifth 
Jubilee of what is now known emphatically, wher- 
ever the history of New England, or the history of 
America, is read, as " The Landing." No other 
landing, temporary or permanent, upon our own or 
upon any other shore, can ever usurp its title, or ever 
supersede or weaken its hold upon the world's 
remembrance and regard. 

There have been other landings, I need hardly 
say, which have left a proud and shining mark on 
the historic page: Landings of discoverers; land- 
ings of conquerors; landings of kings or princes, 
called by right of restoration or revolution to take 
possession of time-honored thrones ; landings of 
organized Colonies, from large and well-appointed 
fleets, on conspicuous coasts, to occupy territories 
opened and prepared, in some degree, for human 
habitation. 

Not such was the landing which we commemo- 
rate to-day. Not such the event which has ren- 
dered this shortest day of all the year so memorable 



5 

for ever in the annals of human freedom. It was 
the landing of a few wear}' and wave-worn men 
from a single ship, — nay, from a single shallop, — 
on a bleak and desolate shore, amid the storms and 
tempests of a well-nigh arctic winter, with none to 
welcome, none even to witness it. I might, indeed, 
be almost pardoned for saying, that the sun itself 
stood still in the heavens to behold it ! But there 
were, certainly, no other witnesses, save those wit- 
nesses to each other's constancy and courage who 
were themselves the actors in the scene, and that 
all-seeing, omnipresent God, who guided and 
guarded all their steps. 

Turn back with me to that epoch of the winter 
solstice, just two hundred and fifty years ago, and let 
us spend at least a portion of this flying hour in 
attempting to recall the precise incidents which 
then occurred on the spot on which we are assem- 
bled, with some of their immediate antecedents and 
consequences. There have been, and will be, other 
occasions for boasting, if any one desires to boast, 
of what New England has accomplished, directly 
or indirectly, for herself or for mankind, in later 
times. There have been, and will be, other oppor- 
tunities for a general glorification of New England 
principles, New England achievements, New Eng- 
land inventions and discoveries, past or present, 
remote or recent. We recognize them all to-day, 
— all, at least, that are worthy of being recognized 



at all, — as the legitimate result and development of 
this day's doings. We count and claim the progress 
of our country, in its best and worthiest sense, as the 
" Pilgrims' Progress ; " — as the grand and glorious 
advance upon a line of march in which they were 
the pioneers, and for which they, in their own 
expressive phrase, literally as well as metaphori- 
cally, were the instruments "to break the ice for 
others." 

To them the honors of this day are due. To their 
memories this Anniversary is sacred. Once in fifty 
years, certainly, we may well refresh our remem- 
brance of what they did and suffered, and still more 
of the aims and ends of all their doino^s and suffer- 
ings. It is an old stor}^, it is true; but there are 
some old stories which are almost forgotten into 
newness. There are some old stories which are 
actually new to every rising generation, and of 
whose real interest and nobleness thousands of 
young hearts receive their first vivid impression 
from what may be said or done on some occasion 
like the present. There are some old stories, too, 
of which even those who hold them in fondest and 
most familiar remembrance are never weary; and 
the appetite for which no repetitions can ever clo}', 
or even satisfy. There are some old stories, let 
me add, — and this is eminently one of them, — 
around which a haze, or it may be a halo, of legend 
and romance is gradually allowed to gather and 



thicken with the lapse of years, and which require 
and demand to be set forth afresh, from time to 
time, in their true simpHcity and grandeur. 

But there is no longer an excuse for doubt or 
uncertainty as to any substantial statement relating 
to the Pilgrim Fathers. Tradition, legend, romance, 
can find "no jutt}', frieze, buttress, nor coigne of van- 
tage, for their pendent bed and procreant cradle," 
in that solid structure of fact and truth which has 
recently been built up, — let me rather say, which 
has recently been discovered and unveiled, in all 
the simple beauty of its original proportions, — by 
the loving students and diligent investigators of 
Pilgrim history. 

It is, indeed, a peculiar advantage of all young 
countries like our own, that, originating in a period 
of written and printed records, they may trace back 
the current of their career to its primal source and 
spring, without leaving room for any intermixture 
of myth or fable. Yet written or even printed 
records may disappear, or be overlooked and for- 
gotten for a time, — awaiting such a search and 
such a scrutiny as Grote and Niebuhr, and Merivale 
and Mommsen, have recently brought to the history 
of Greece or Rome ; or as Froude, even more re- 
markably, has just given to the history of England's 
Qiieen Elizabeth. 

Even such a search and such a scrutiny have of 
late been applied to the history of the little band 



whose landing we are here to commemorate, and 
most richly have they been rewarded. Since the 
last Jubilee of the Pilgrims was celebrated, fifty 
years ago, — when that grand discourse of New 
England's grandest orator and statesman summoned 
the attention of the world so emphaticall}' to their 
sublime but simple story, — antiquarians at home and 
abroad, pious and painstaking students, American 
travellers in foreign lands not forgetful of their own, 
one and all, have seemed inflamed with a new zeal 
to subject that story to the closest examination ; to 
sift out from it everything conjectural and legendary; 
and to investigate the Pilgrim track, footstep by 
footstep, wherever it could be found, in the Old 
World as well as in the New. Nothing has been 
too minute or trivial to elude their search; nothing 
too seemingly inscrutable to repel or discourage 
their pursuit; nothing too generally credited to sat- 
isfy their eagerness for positive proof and authentic 
verification. As the marvellous growth of that ma- 
jestic perennial, of which the Mayflower supplied 
the seed, has been developed and displayed, with 
all its myriad leaves for the healing of the nations, 
and all its magic branches for sweetening so many 
bitter fountains, and all its rich and varied fruits for 
ourselves and for mankind, they have been more and 
more incited to trace back that seed to- its native 
bed; to analyze with almost chemical exactness its 
smallest seminal principles; and to ascertain pre- 



cisely by what culture, and by what hands, it was 
made so to take root upon a rock, and to bud and 
blossom and bear so abundantly in a wilderness. 

We owe these laborious investigators a deep debt 
of gratitude, and it is fit that we should not for- 
get them, this day, as we avail ourselves of their 
researches. I need but name the late admirable 
Judge Davis, whose excellent edition of " Morton's 
Memorial " led the way in the later illustrations of 
Pilgrim history. I need but name the late Reverend 
Dr. Alexander Young, whose "Chronicles of Plym- 
outh " ought to be fresh in the memory of every son 
and daughter of the old Colony. But let me recall 
more deliberately a venerable antiquary of Old Eng- 
land, whom it was my good fortune to meet at the 
breakfast-table of the celebrated historian Hallam, 
nearly a quarter of a century ago, — the late Rev- 
erend Joseph Hunter ; who, having diversified his 
routine of service, in her Majesty's Public Record 
Office, by tracts illustrative of the great triumphs of 
his own country in arms and in literature, — tri- 
umphs by the sword of Henry V. at Agincourt, and 
triumphs by the pens of Shakspeare and Milton in 
the fields of epic or dramatic poetry, — turned to the 
Pilgrims of Plymouth, and to the Puritans of Massa- 
chusetts, for the latest and best themes of his un- 
wearied investigations. To him we primarily owe 
it that we can follow back that little band, to which 
the name of Brownists had been contemptuously 



lo 



given, to the very hive from which they first 
swarmed, — that little circle in Yorkshire and Not- 
tinghamshire, and not far from Lincolnshire, around 
which he so fitly inscribed the legend, " Maximse 
gentis incunabula," — the cradle of the greatest 
nation. By the light of his antiquarian torch we 
are able to fix the precise locality and surround- 
ings of the old Manor Place of Scrooby, — formerly 
a palace of the Archbishops of York,, and which had 
often been the residence of at least one of them, 
" that he might enjoy the diversion of hunting " 
in the neighboring chase of Hatfield; which was 
occupied as a refuge for many weeks by the great 
lord Cardinal Wolsey, when, having " ventured in a 
sea of glory, but far beyond his depth," he had at 
last been left, " weary and old with service, to the 
mercy of a rude stream," which was for ever to hide 
him ; and which, not many years afterwards, Henry 
the Eighth himself had selected for a resting-place, 
during one of his Royal progresses to the north; — 
but which, half a century later, had become the home 
of one, whose occupation of it, even for an hour, 
would have given it a celebrity and a sanctity in our 
remembrance and regard, which neither Archbish- 
ops, nor Cardinals, nor Kings, could have imparted 
to it in a lifetime. 

There, in that " manor of the Bishops," of which, 
alas ! hardly a fragment is now left, lived William 
Brewster, — one of the noblest of the men whom 



II 

we are here to commemorate, and not unworthy to 
be named first of all, on such an occasion as this. 
Educated at the University of Cambridge, and hav- 
ing served as the faithful Secretary of the accom- 
plished Davison (Queen Elizabeth's Ambassador in 
Holland, and afterwards one of her Secretaries of 
State), — until Davison's too prompt and implicit 
obedience to the orders of his Royal Mistress in the 
matter of poor Mary, Queen of Scots, had afforded 
a pretext for discarding him, — Brewster had retired 
with disgust from the pomps and vanities, the capri- 
ces and cruelties, of the Court, and had given him- 
self up to religious meditation and study. Deeply 
impressed with the corruptions and superstitions, 
the prelatical assumptions and tyrannies, of the 
English Church, as it then existed, in those earlier 
transition stages of the Reformation, he had united 
himself with one of the little bodies of Separatists 
from that communion, and soon became " a special 
help and stay to them." At his house, — this very 
"manor of the Bishops," which Mr. Hunter helped 
us to identify, — we learn that the members of the 
church of which the sainted Robinson was the pas- 
tor, the church of our Plymouth Pilgrims, "ordi- 
narily met on the Lord's Day; and with great love 
he entertained them when they came, making pro- 
vision for them to his great charge; and continued 
so to do while they could stay in England." 

Our mother country has many spots within her 



12 

dominions which are dear to the hearts of the lovers 
of rehgious and of civil liberty in both hemispheres: 
The plain of Runn3^mede, the Lollard's Tower, the 
Tower of London, the Martyrs' Monument at Ox- 
ford, the glorious Abbey of Westminster, the grand 
Cathedrals in almost every county; but I know of 
none more worthy of being visited with pious rever- 
ence, by every American traveller certainly, than 
that old original site of Brewster's residence in Not- 
tinghamshire; nor one which more deserves to be 
marked, not indeed by any ostentatious or sumptu- 
ous structure, out of all keeping with the plain and 
frugal character of those who have made it mem- 
orable for ever, but by some appropriate monument, 
a chapel or a school-house, erected by the care and 
at the cost of the sons and daughters of New Eng- 
land. We all remember that John Cotton's chapel 
at Old Boston was restored, not many years ago, by 
the contributions of a few of the generous sons of 
New Boston. The place where Robinson and 
Brewster gathered that first Pilgrim Church is cer- 
tainly not less worthy of commemoration. 

But it is not only the residence of Brewster which 
the researches of good Mr. Hunter, the very Nim- 
rod of Antiquaries, have revealed to us. There, 
within that charmed circle — the cradle of the great- 
est nation — he helped us to discover a birthplace, 
which owing to a blundering misprint had so long 
baffled the most eager search; the birthplace of one 



13 

who miofht almost contest with Brewster himself the 
right to be named first at any commemoration of 
the Pilgrim Fathers, — their Governor for thirty 
years, their Historian, their principal writer both in 
prose and verse, and second to no one of them, from 
first to last, in the fidelity and devotion with which 
he sustained and illustrated their principles. There, 
within that same charmed circle, of which the little 
market town of Bawtry is the centre, and the greater 
part, if not the whole, of which is now the property 
of one whose recent title, as a peer, has not obliter- 
ated our remembrance of his name as a poet, and 
who may be recalled with the more pleasure at this 
hour as one of the few among the English nobility 
who sympathized with the North in our late war for 
the Union, — there, in the record book of the little 
church of Austerfield, still standing, has been found 
the distinct entry, "William, son of William, Brad- 
fourth, baptized the XIX'!! day of March, Anno Dni 
1589." 

I hold in my hand a photographic picture of that 
ancient edifice, and one, too, of the registered entry 
of Bradford's baptism, given me two or three 3''ears 
ago by Lord Houghton, — Monckton Milnes that 
was, — now Lord of the Manor, I believe, — and 
which I would gladly deposit in your Pilgrim Mu- 
seum, if they are not there already. 

The font from which Bradford was christened, 
and the altar-rails at which his parents doubtless 



kneeled — for he must have been baptized according 
to the rites, and by a pastor of the Church of Eng- 
land — are still preserved. But neither pastor nor 
parents could have dreamed, as the infant boy winced, 
perhaps, from the coldness of that sprinkled water, 
and shrunk, it ma}' be, from the signing with the sign 
of the cross upon his tiny forehead, how sturdy and 
uncompromising a hater he was to become, in his 
mature life, of all mere forms and shows and cere- 
monies of religion; and, at the same time, how 
earnest and ardent and devoted a lover and upholder 
of the great truths and doctrines of which these were 
but the outward and visible signs. 

Bradford and Brewster, if I mistake not, are the 
only two of our Pilgrim leaders, who can be dis- 
tinctly identified with that little church at Scrooby, 
of which the venerable Richard Clifton and the 
zealous John Robinson were the associated pastor 
and teacher, and out of which came this first per- 
manent settlement of New England. Bradford, 
indeed, was but a boy in age, at that early period, — 
hardly more than sixteen years old, an orphan boy, 
— and must have been like a son to Brewster, who 
was thirty years his senior; but he was a boy who 
seems to have known " little more of the state of 
childhood but its innocency and pleasantness," and 
who was capable, even then, of rendering no feeble 
aid and comfort to his maturer leader and friend. 
Together they braved persecution. Together they 



15 

bore the taunts and scoffs of neighbors and relatives. 
Together they embraced exile. Together they were 
cast into prison at old Boston in Lincolnshire. 
Together, after a brief separation, — for Bradford 
was liberated first on account of his youth, — they 
found refuge in Holland. Together they embarked 
in the Mayflower. Together they were associated 
for three and twenty years, — for Brewster lived in 
a vigorous old age till 1643, — in establishing and 
ruling the Pilgrim plantation here at New Plym- 
outh. 

Brewster and Bradford, the ^neas and Ascanius 
of our grand Pilgrim Epic, — I might better have 
said, the Paul and Timoth}^, or be it Titus, of our 
New England, Plymouth, Separatist Church, — both 
of them laymen, but both of them, by life and 
word, by precept and example, showing forth the 
great doctrines of Christ, their Saviour, with a 
power and a persuasiveness which might well have 
been envied by any pastor or preacher or lordly prel- 
ate of that or any other day : — For ever honored 
be their names in New England historj^and in New 
England hearts! Alas! that no portrait of either of 
them is left, — if, indeed, in their simplicity and 
modesty, they would ever have allowed one to be 
taken, — so that their image, as well as their names 
and their example, might be held up to the contem- 
plation of our country and of mankind for endless 
generations ! 



i6 



But the little church of which they were mem- 
bers was able, as we know, to maintain its precari- 
ous and perilous existence at Scrooby, for hardly 
more than a single 3'ear, certainly for not more than 
two years. It could find indeed no safe refuge or 
resting-place in Old England; and having heard that 
in the Low Countries, as they were then called, 
there was freedom, or at least toleration, for differ- 
ences of religious faiths and forms, its members 
resolved to fly from persecution and establish them- 
selves in Holland. I will not attempt to describe 
the perils they encountered, and the sufferings they 
endured, in that flight; — the separations of children 
from parents, and of wives from husbands; the 
arrests and examinations, the fines and imprison- 
ments, to which so many of them were subjected; 
the " hair-breadth 'scapes " of one large party of 
them during a tempestuous voyage of fourteen days, 
in crossing the German Ocean, in an almost sinking 
ship. The whole story is familiar to you. It is 
enough that we find them all at last safely in Amster- 
dam, where they are free to enjoy their pure and 
simple worship, and where they remain quietly for 
another year. 

Not a trace is left of their residence in that then 
mighty mart, almost a second Venice; born of the 
sea, "built in the very lap of the floods, and encir- 
cled in their watery arms; " and claiming the whole 
ocean, from the Baltic to the Levant, not only as the 



17 

field of its enterprise, but almost as its own right- 
ful inheritance and domain. Not, a trace of them 
is left there. We only know that, finding they 
were in danger of being involved in contentions 
about women's dresses and men's starched bands, 
and other such vital matters, which had sprung up 
in another little church of English Separatists which 
had fled there before them, and thus of being robbed 
of that harmony and peace which the}' prized above 
all earthly things, and which they had abandoned 
home and kindred and country to enjoy, — they 
thought it best to remove once more, and establish 
themselves at the neighboring inland city of Leyden. 
It was a great epoch in Dutch history, when 
the Pilgrims took up their abode in Holland, and 
began to habituate themselves to its '^ strange and 
uncouth " customs and language. It was the precise 
period at which, as the close and consummation of 
" the most tremendous war for liberty ever waged," 
our own Motley has terminated his admirable ac- 
count of "The United Netherlands," — to begin it 
again, we trust, at no distant day, and then to show 
us precisely what was going on in that interest- 
ing country while our Fathers were witnesses and 
partakers of its fortunes. Within a year after 
they reached Amsterdam, and the very year they 
removed to Leyden, the grand twelve years' truce 
between Spain and her revolted Colonies had been 
negotiated and ratified. Those Colonies had now 



i8 

virtually established their freedom and independ- 
ence. Olden Barneveldt and Prince Maurice had 
reconciled their animosities and rivalries for a time; 
and the great Republic — henceforth, though not 
for ever, to be known and recognized as the United 
States of the Netherlands — was enjo3'ing internal 
as well as external peace and rest, after a fearful 
struggle of forty years' duration. 

It is a charming coincidence, certainly, that the 
coming of the Pilgrims was thus simultaneous with 
the commencement of that blessed truce, which 
was destined, too, by its own limitation, to last dur- 
ing the precise period of their stay there. One 
might almost picture the bow of peace and promise, 
lifting itself in all its many-colored glories, and over- 
arching that blood-stained soil, to welcome the little 
band of fugitives for conscience' sake to their tem- 
porary repose, and to assure them that war should 
crimson its fields no more while they should bless 
it with their presence! 

At Leyden, they find, as Bradford says, "a fair 
and beautiful city, and of a sweet situation, but made 
more famous by the University wherewith it is 
adorned, in which of late had been so many learned 
men." That was, certainly, a noble University, 
erected as a monument to the heroism of those who 
had fought and fallen in the dreadful siege which 
the city had endured so grandly in 1574, — erected 
in the same spirit in which our Memorial Hall has 



19 

recently been founded at Cambridge by the Alumni 
of Harvard. Famous professors, and famous schol- 
ars also, it had indeed enjoyed. The learned 
Arminius had died just as the Pilgrims arrived 
there, but his teachings and doctrines were left to 
be the subject of endless disputation. The marvel- 
lous Joseph Scaliger, too, had died the same year; 
but his not less marvellous pupil, Hugo Grotius, 
was only at the outset of his great career, having 
published his Latin Tragedy, " The Suffering 
Christ," the very year of their arrival at Amster- 
dam, and his " Mare Liberum " the year of their 
removal to Leyden. 

The youthful Bradford may not, perhaps, have 
been much in the way of taking note or notice of 
what was going on at this great seat of learning, 
as, in default of other means of support, he had put 
himself as an apprentice to a French Protestant, 
and was acquiring the art of dyeing silk. But Brews- 
ter had found employment as a tutor to some of the 
youth of the city and the University, and was teach- 
ing them the English language by a grammar of his 
own construction; while, at the same time, he had set 
up a printing-press, and " was instrumental in pub- 
lishing several books against the hierarchy, which 
could not obtain a license in England." To him the 
University and its learned professors, and all their 
proceedings and lectures, must have been as famil- 
iar as they were interesting. His revered friend 



20 



and pastor, Robinson, moreover, — as we learn from 
the researches of an accomplished and lamented 
New England scholar and traveller (the late Mr, 
George Sumner), — was formalh^ admitted to the 
privileges of a member or subject of the University 
four or tive years after his arrival at Leyden. By 
the investigations of Mr. Sumner, too, and of a late 
American Minister at the Hague, the Hon. Henry 
C. Murphy, we have been enabled to identify the 
very spot, in the Cathedral Church of St. Peter, where 
the precious remains of this holy man, whose mem- 
ory is so dear to New England, were at least tem- 
porarily deposited; while the record of that burial 
has also most happily helped us to fix the exact 
place of his residence as long as he lived there. In 
that residence, — and not in any church edifice, for 
they had none, — there is the best reason for think- 
ing that the Pilgrims worshipped; and thanks to the 
pious pains of the Rev. Henr}^ Martyn Dexter, of 
Boston, whose labors in the cause of Pilgrim his- 
tory I may find further cause for acknowledging, a 
plate has been affixed to the walls of the building 
which now stands on that site, inscribed, " On this 
spot lived, taught and died, John Robinson, 
1611-1625." 

I cannot forget that I lingered in Leyden, for some 
hours, two or three years ago, for the single pur- 
pose of visiting that site, and the place of the 
grave of him who made it so memorable for ever; 



21 

but I could find no one at hand to point either 
of them out for me; and, but for the record of Mr. 
Sumner and the inscription of Dr. Dexter, I might 
have missed all that there is there to recall the 
memory of the Fathers of New England. For, in- 
deed, this is all, — the place of a temporary grave 
and the site of a dwelling long ago levelled to the 
ground, — this is absolutely all which can be iden- 
tified of the Pilgrims' home at Leyden for eleven 
years. Yet no New Englander, I think, can visit 
that city on an early autumn or a late summer's day, 
and behold the ancient buildings on which their 
eyes must have been accustomed to look; and gaze 
on the countless canals, and on the flowing river, on 
the bosom of which they must so often have sailed, 
and on the banks of which they must so often have 
rested ; and drink in that soft, hazy, golden sunshine, 
which one of the great masters of that region 
(Cuyp), not far from the very time and place at 
which they were enjoying it, was engaged in making 
the chief charm of not a few of his most exquisite 
landscapes, — without being conscious of the inspi- 
ration of the scene; nor without feeling and acknowl- 
edging that there is, and will forever be, a magnetic 
sympathy between Leyden and Plymouth Rock, 
which no material batteries or tangible wires are 
needed to kindle and keep alive. 

Leyden must indeed have been, as we know it 
was, most dear to the hearts of the Pilgrim Fathers. 



22 



There they found rest and safety. There, to use 
their own language, they enjoyed " much sweet and 
delightful society and spiritual comfort together in 
the ways of God," and " lived together in peace and 
love and holiness." But there, too, they were joined 
by not a few of those who were to be most service- 
able and most dear to them in their future experi- 
ences and trials. 

There they were joined by John Carver, of 
whom we know enough for his own glory, and for 
his perpetual remembrance among men, in know- 
ing almost nothing except that he was counted 
worth}' to be chosen the first Governor of the 
little band, and that he died, here at Pl3^mouth, 
after a brief career, in the faithful discharge of that 
office. 

There Robert Cushman joined them, who, in 
spite of some infirmities of temper and some infelic- 
ities of conduct, and though at one time he seemed 
to have "put his hand to the plough and to have 
looked back," and was missing from the group 
whose advent we celebrate to-day, came over not 
long afterwards, reinstated in the confidence of 
those with whom he had been so prominently asso- 
ciated at Leyden; delivered, in the Common House 
of the Plantation, that memorable sermon on Self- 
Love, the first printed sermon of New England, if 
not of our whole continent; and, after a perhaps pre- 
mature return home, continued to watch carefully 



23 

over the interests of the Pilgrims in England, writ- 
ing letters remarkable alike for the beauty of their 
style and for the prudence of their counsel; and was 
lamented by Bradford, when he heard of his death 
in 1624, as "a wise and faithful friend." 

There they were joined by Miles Standish, the 
intrepid soldier and famous captain of New Eng- 
land; who, having served on the side of the Dutch 
in the armies of England in the war against Spain, 
and having now been released by the great truce 
from further campaigning in the Old World, united 
himself with the Pilgrims, and, though not a mem- 
ber of their church, followed their fortunes, and 
fought their battles gallantly to the end. A little 
man himself, — hardl}^ more than five feet high, 
— the grand army with which he performed "his 
most capital exploit" was probably the smallest 
which was ever mustered for a serious conflict in 
the annals of human warfare, — only eight men 
besides their leader. But, "in small room large 
heart inclosed," he had acquired, not perhaps 
from Caesar's Commentaries, his favorite study, but 
certainly from some other source, a knowledge 
which some of the ruthless warriors of the present 
day have failed to exhibit, — the knowledge where 
to stop, as well as when to strike; and, having 
secured a signal victory, he brought home in safety 
every man whom he carried out. Honor to Miles 
Standish, " the stalwart captain of Plymouth," of 



24 

whose restrained wrath, when the Puritan influence 
had come in to temper the profanity for which there 
was a proverbial Hcense in Flanders, our charming- 
Longfellow would seem to have caught the very 
accent and cadence, when he says of it, — 

" Sometimes it seemed like a prayer, and sometimes it sounded like 
swearing ; " 

and whose threefold accomplishments he so tersely 
sums up, when he describes him as doubting 

"Which of the three he should choose for his consolation and comfort, 
Whether the wars of the Hebrews, the famous campaigns of the 

Romans, 
Or the artillery practice, designed for belligerent Christians." 

A higher tribute to the fidelity, vigilance, and 
courage of the old Plymouth captain could hardly 
have been paid, than when the late venerable Judge 
Davis, — a Pl3^mouth man, and full of the original 
Plymouth spirit, — not many years before his death, 
unwilling to be wanting to the volunteer patrol 
service, in Boston, on some occasion of real or 
imaginary peril, made solemn application to our 
old Massachusetts Historical Society for the use 
of one of his reputed — albeit somewhat rusty — 
swords, and walked the midnight round with that 
for his trusty and all-sufficient companion. 

But there, too, at Leyden, they were joined, — by 
the accidents of travel, as it would seem, — in 1617, 
by one of the very noblest of our little band, who 
was soon associated most leadingly and lovingly 



25 

with all their spiritual as well as temporal concerns; 
their Governor for three years, when Bradford had 
" by importunity got off ; " the narrator and chron- 
icler of not a few of the most interesting passages 
of their histor}'; the leader of not a few of their 
most important enterprises; a man of eminent activ- 
ity, resolution, and bravery; who did not shrink from 
offering himself as a hostage to the savages, while 
a conference was held and a treaty made with one 
of their barbarous chieftains; who did not shrink 
from imprisonment, and the danger of death, in con- 
fronting, as an agent of Plymouth and Massachusetts, 
the tyrannical Archbishop Laud; who earned a 
gentler and more practical title to remembrance as 
the importer of the first neat cattle ever introduced 
into New England; an earnest and devoted friend 
to the civilization of the Indian tribes and their con- 
version to Christianity; the chief commissioner of 
Oliver Cromwell in his warlike designs upon an 
island, which our own hero President has so recently 
attempted to secure by peaceful purchase : — Edward 
WiNSLOW, — the only one of the Pilgrim Fathers of 
whom we have an authentic portrait; whose old 
seat of Careswell, at Marshfield, was the chosen 
home of Webster; and whose remains, had they not 
been committed to the deep, when he died so sadly 
on the sea, at the close of his unsuccessful expedi- 
tion to St. Domingo, would have been counted 
among the most precious dust which New England 
could possess. 4 



26 

Leyden must indeed have been dear to the Pil- 
grims, as the place where so many of these leading 
spirits first entered into their association, and first 
pledged their lives and fortunes to the sacred 
enterprise. 

But Leyden, and the whole marvellous land of 
which it was at that day one of the most interesting 
and enlightened cities, had a charm for our Fore- 
fathers far above all mere personal considerations. 
It was a land to which the great German poet, 
dramatist, and historian, Schiller, in his " Revolt of 
the Netherlands," gave the noblest testimony, in say- 
ing that " every injury inflicted by a tyrant gave a 
right of citizenship in Holland." It was a land to 
which that quaint old Suffolk Count}'^ essayist, 
Owen Felltham, paid a still higher tribute when he 
described it as " a place of refuge for sectaries of 
all denominations." "Let but some of our Separa- 
tists be asked," said he, with evident reference to 
our English exiles of whom he was a contemporary, 
" let but some of our Separatists be asked, and they 
shall swear that the Elysian Fields are there." " If 
you are unsettled," says he in another place, " if 
you are unsettled in your religion, you ma}^ trj^ here 
all, and take at last what you like best. If you 
fancy none, you have a pattern to follow of two 
that would be a church by themselves." 

Yes, that was exactly it, — "a Church by them- 
selves;" and there, in that church by themselves, 



27 

our Pilofrlm Fathers first tasted the sweets of civil 
and religious freedom, and enjoyed that liberty to 
worship God, according to the dictates of their 
own consciences, which to them was worth every 
sacrifice and above all price. There, too, just 
as they removed from Amsterdam to Leyden, the 
extraordinary sound was heard, — from the lips 
of a Roman Catholic, and in behalf of his Roman 
Catholic brethren, — of an appeal for liberty of 
conscience which was never surpassed by the 
founders of Rhode Island, Maryland, or Pennsyl- 
vania. " Those," said President Jeannin, most forci- 
bly and eloquently, on taking leave of the States 
General, " those cannot be said to share any enjoy- 
ment from whom has been taken the power of serv- 
ing God according to the religion in which they 
were brought up. On the contrar}^, no slavery is 
more intolerable nor more exasperates the mind 
than such restraint. You know this well, my Lords 
States; you know, too, that it was the principal, 
the most puissant cause that made 3^ou fly to arms 
and scorn all dangers, in order to effect your deliv- 
erance from this servitude. You know that it has 
excited similar movements in various parts of Chris- 
tendom, and even in the kingdom of France, with 
such fortunate success everywhere as to make it 
appear that God had so willed it, in order to prove 
that religion ought to be taught and inspired by the 
movements which come from the Holy Ghost, and 
not by the force of man." 



28 

We know not precisely how far the ears of the 
Pilgrims may have been regaled, and their hearts 
encouraged and strengthened, by this grand appeal 
from so unaccustomed a source. Brewster, who, 
as we have seen, had been in the Low Countries 
before, as Secretary to the English Ambassador, 
may hardly have been ignorant of it. But, at all 
events, it affords most significant testimony to the 
spirit of religious liberty which pervaded the land 
in which such words at that period could have been 
uttered; and, coming from the lips of a Romanist, it 
must have put to shame any Protestant bigotr}^ or 
intolerance, if any such were lurking there, which 
might have restrained the full freedom of our Eng- 
lish exiles. Dr. Belknap, in his American Biogra- 
phy, may, perhaps, have anticipated events in stating, 
as he does, that Robinson himself, about this time, 
after a friendly conference with one upon whose name 
he had recently made a petulant pun, in an angry 
controversy, — changing it reproachfully from Ames 
to Amiss, — relaxed the rigor of his Separatism ; 
published a book, allowing and defending the lawful- 
ness of communicating with the Church of England; 
"allowed pious members of the Church of England, 
and of all the reformed churches, to communicate 
with his church; and declared that he separated 
from no church, but from the corruptions of all 
churches." But the statement was substantially 
true of a later period, if not of this. The book, he 



29 

adds, gained him the title of a Semi-Separatist, and 
was so offensive to the rigid Brownists of Amster- 
dam that they would scarcely hold communion with 
the Church of Leyden. 

But, alas! more serious dissensions than these 
were soon to agitate again that whole united Repub- 
lic, and to involve it in a crime of which all the 
multitudinous seas which surround it could hardly 
wash out the stain. The successor to the chair of 
Arminius in the University of Leyden (Vorstius) 
had not only stirred up " hearts of controversy " in 
his own land by teaching and preaching the peculiar 
doctrines of his master, but had roused the special 
indignation of the Royal theological polemic and 
titular Defender of the Faith across the channel, — 
that same James I., who a few years before had cut 
short a conference with the Puritan leaders, at 
Hampton Court, by declaring that " he would make 
them conform or he would harry them out of the 
land," and who, in this respect certainly, had been 
as good as his word. The recent assassination 
of his glorious fellow-sovereign, Henry IV. of 
France, had revived and quickened his antipathy not 
to Roman Catholics only, but to all religionists 
who did not agree with himself; and he had the 
insolence now to demand that the obnoxious Pro- 
fessor of Leyden should be dismissed from his chair 
and banished from the States, — leaving it, also, to 
their " Christian wisdom " whether he should not be 



30 

burned at the stake for " his atheism and blasphe- 
mies." The States were compelled to comply, and 
did most humiliatingly comply, with this demand; 
but the banishment of Vorstius only the more 
inflamed the theological strife which raged through- 
out their dominions. Prince Maurice and Olden 
Barneveldt were again at each other's throats; the 
former as the leader of the Calvinist party, and the 
latter as the leader of the Arminians, with Grotius 
as his second. And, incredible as it seems to us at 
this hour, the controversy was only terminated by 
one of the most infamous judicial murders which 
pollute the annals of mankind; taking its loath- 
some place in the calendar of crime by the side of 
the execution of Sir Walter Raleigh, the year before, 
and of Algernon Sydney and Lord William Russell 
half a century later. On the 13th of May, 1619, 
Olden Barneveldt, the noble patriot and benefactor, 
second to no one among the founders of the Repub- 
lic and the authors of its liberties, was condemned 
to death and beheaded at the Hague; while Grotius 
was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, — from 
which, however, the ingenuity of his wife happily 
released him at the end of two years. 

I would gladly have found some allusion to these 
monstrous outrages in some of the journals or letters 
of the Pilgrims. Occurring, as they did, during the 
very last year of their residence there, I would 
gladly believe that some abhorrence of such crimes 



31 

may have mingled with their motives for seeking 
another place of refuge. Although their religious 
sympathies were strongly with the Calvinist party, 
and their pastor, Robinson, had disputed publicly 
against the doctrines of Arminius, — putting his 
antagonist Episcopius, the Arminian Professor, to 
" an apparent nonplus," as Bradford tells us, " not 
once only, but a second and third time, before a 
great and public audience, and winning a famous 
victory for the truth," and " much honor and respect 
for those who loved the truth," — yet he and Brews- 
ter and Bradford and Winslow must have shrunk 
with horror from this atrocious murder. There is 
good reason for believing that Brewster, indeed, left 
Leyden with his family not many weeks afterwards; 
and I will not doubt that such events increased the 
eagerness of them all once more to change the 
place of their habitation, and hastened their negotia- 
tions with the merchant adventurers in London. 

But their purpose of quitting Holland had been 
conceived nearly two years before this terrible 
tragedy was enacted. As early as the autumn of 
1617, Robert Cushman and John Carver had been 
sent as their agents to attempt an arrangement for 
their removal to America with the Virginia Com- 
pany in London; and in 16 18 the Church of Ley- 
den — with a view to removing the objections, and 
conciliating the favor of the King and others — had 
adopted those memorable Seven Articles, first pub- 



32 

lished in 1856 by our accomplished historian Ban- 
croft, in which the authority of his Majesty and of 
his Bishops is acknowledged, with an unqualified 
assent "to the confession of faith published in the 
name of the Church of England and to every article 
thereof" The adoption of these " Seven Articles," 
and the appeals addressed to Sir Edwin Sandys and 
others by Brewster and Robinson, at length elicited 
an assurance that " both the King and the Bishops 
had consented to wink at their departure." 

" Conniving at them and winking at their depart- 
ure " were all the assurances they could wring from 
Royalty. " To allow or tolerate them by his public 
authority, under his seal, they found it would not 
be." And though the Virginia Compan}^ were 
strongly desirous to have them go to America under 
their auspices, and willing to grant them a patent 
with as ample privileges as they could grant to any 
one, the feuds and factions in the council of the 
Company occasioned such delays that no patent was 
sealed until the 9th of June, 16 19; and, after all the 
labor and cost of procuring it, it was never made 
use of. An agreement, however, was entered into 
with Thomas Weston and other merchant adven- 
turers; the Mayflower was hired to await them at 
Southampton; the Speedwell was bought to take 
them over to England, and keep them company 
afterwards; a day of solemn humiliation was spent, 
— after a parting sermon from Robinson, who was 



33 

to remain behind with half the members of his 
church, — " in pouring out prayers to the Lord with 
great fervency mixed with abundance of tears," and 
so they proceeded to Delft Haven; and after another 
most touching parting scene, all kneeling in prayer 
and taking leave of each other, " with mutual em- 
braces and many te^rs," the sail was hoisted, and 
with a prosperous wind they came in a short time 
to Southampton. There they found "the bigger 
ship come from London, lying read}^, with all the 
rest of their company." A few days more are 
occupied in dealing with their agents and the mer- 
chant adventurers; a noble farewell letter from 
Robinson is received and read; and once more they 
set sail. A leak in the Speedwell compels them to 
put in at Dartmouth, and then again, after they had 
gone above a hundred leagues beyond Land's End, 
to put back to Pl3'mouth, and to abandon the Speed- 
well altogether. At last, " these troubles being 
blown over, and now all being compact together in 
one ship, they put to sea again with a prosperous 
wind;" and on the i6th day of September, 1620, 
Old England is parted from for ever. The May- 
flower, and its one hundred and two passengers, 
have entered on the voyage, which is to end not 
merely in founding a more memorable Plymouth 
than that which they left behind, but in laying the 
corner-stone of a mightier and freer nation than the 

sun in its circuit had ever before shone upon. 

5 



34 

England at the moment took no note of their 
departing. Her philosophers and statesmen and 
poets had not quite yet begun to appreciate the 
losses which religious persecution was entailing 
upon her. Lord Bacon, indeed, "the great Secre- 
tary of Nature and all learning," as Isaac Walton 
called him, had already foreshadowed the glory 
which was to be gained by some of his Suffolk and 
Lincolnshire neighbors, when, in one of his cele- 
brated essays, he assigned the first place, "in the true 
marshalling of the degrees of sovereign honor," to the 
^^ conditores imperiorum, — the founders of States and 
Commonwealths." But it was more than ten years 
afterwards before the saintly Herbert published those 
noted lines, which the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge 
had so much hesitation about licensing : — 

" Religion stands on tiptoe in our land, 
Readie to passe to the American strand." 

And it was nearly ten years later still, when John 
Milton, in his treatise " Of Reformation in England," 
exclaimed, " What numbers of faithful and free-born 
Englishmen, and good Christians, have been con- 
strained to forsake their dearest home, their friends 
and kindred, whom nothing but the wide ocean, and 
the savage deserts of America, could hide and shel- 
ter from the fury of the bishops! Oh, sir, if we 
could but see the shape of our dear mother England, 
as poets are wont to give a personal form to what 
they please, how would she appear, think ye, but in 



35 

a mourning weed, with ashes upon her head, and 
tears abundantly flowing from her eyes, to behold 
so many of her children exposed at once, and thrust 
from things of dearest necessity, because their con- 
science could not assent to things which the bishops 
thought indifferent! " 

But the time was to come when England was to 
make signal recognition of this memorable Exodus. 
Little did they imagine, — those pious, humble, 
simple-hearted men and women, as they stood on 
the deck of their little bark of only one hundred and 
eighty tons' burthen, and looked wistfully upon their 
native shores receding from their moistened eyes, — 
little did they imagine that the scene of that embarka- 
tion, before two centuries and a half had passed away, 
should not only be among the most cherished orna- 
ments of the Rotundo of the American Capitol, but 
should be found, as it is found this day, among the 
most conspicuous frescoes in the corridors of the 
Parliament Houses of Old England. Still less could 
the haughty Monarch and the bigoted Prelates, who 
had reluctantly been induced "to connive and wink 
at their departure," have dreamed, that such a picture 
should ever be warranted and welcomed by their 
successors, as one of the appropriate scenes for 
inspiring and for warning them, as they should 
sweep along, through the grand galleries of State, to 
their places on the throne or the Episcopal bench, 
in that gorgeous Chamber of the temporal and 
spiritual Lords of Great Britain. 



36 

But this would not be the only souvenir of the 
Pilgrim Fathers which might suffuse the cheeks of 
a Bancroft, a Wren, or a Laud, could they be per- 
mitted to revisit the scenes of their old prelatical 
intolerance and arrogance. 

The suburban residence of the Bishop of London 
at Fulham has many charms. Its velvet lawn, its 
walks upon the Thames, its grand old oaks and 
cedars of Lebanon, its fine historical portraits, its 
rare library, its beautiful modern chapel, and, above 
all, its antique hall, recently restored, — in which the 
cruel Bonner and the noble Ridley may have succes- 
sively held their councils during the struggles of the 
Reformation, and where Bancroft and Laud may have 
concerted their schemes of bigotry and persecution, — 
render it altogether one of the most interesting places 
near London, and hardly less attractive than Lambeth 
itself. I have been privileged to visit it on more 
than one of those delicious afternoons of an English 
June, when the apartments and the grounds were 
thronged by all that was most distinguished in the 
society of the Metropolis, assembled to pay their 
respects to one whose exalted character, and earnest 
piety, and liberal churchmanship, and unsparing 
devotion to the humblest as well as the highest 
duties of his station, have won for him universal 
esteem, respect, and affection, and who has recently 
been called by the Queen to the Primacy of all 
England. But I need hardly say, that to an Ameri- 



37 

can, or certainly to a New England eye, there was 
nothing in all the treasures of art, or of antiquity, or 
of literature, which that palace contained, — nothing 
in all the loveliness of its natural scenery and sur- 
roundings, nothing in all the historical associations 
of the spot, nothing in all the beauty and accom- 
plishments and titled or untitled celebrity of the 
company gathered beneath the roof or scattered 
upon the lawn, — which could compare for a moment 
with the interest of an old manuscript volume, which 
strangely enough had found its way there, of all 
places in the world, and which had rested for three 
quarters of a century almost unidentified and unrec- 
ognized on its library-shelves. You will all have 
anticipated me when I say that it is the long-lost 
manuscript volume, of which but a small portion had 
ever been printed or copied, written by the hand of 
William Bradford himself, and giving the detailed 
story of the Pilgrim Fathers from their first gather- 
ing at Scrooby down to the year 1647. 

My valued friend, Mr. Charles Deane, to whom, 
above almost all others, we are indebted for throw- 
ing light upon the early history of New England, in 
the edition of this volume which he so admirably 
prepared and annotated for the Collections of the 
Massachusetts Historical Society, has sufficiently 
described the circumstances of its discovery. When 
the glad tidings first reached us, I did not fail to 
sympathize with those who felt that a more rightful 



38 

as well as more congenial and appropriate place for 
such a manuscript might be found on this side of 
the Atlantic. But after a little more reflection, and 
after we had secured an exact and complete trans- 
cript of it for publication, I could not help feeling 
that there was something of special fitness and feli- 
city in its being left precisely where it is. There 
let it rest, as a remembrancer to all who shall suc- 
ceed, generation after generation, to that famous 
See and its charming palace, of the simple faith, the 
devoted piety, the brave obedience to the dictates 
of conscience, of those who led the way in the col- 
onization of New England, and who endured so 
heroically the persecutions and perils which that 
great enterprise involved! 

How it would have gratified the honest heart of 
Bradford himself, could he have known where his 
precious volume should at length be found, and in 
what estimation it should be held after it was found! 
How it would have delighted him to know that 
instead of being set down in some " Index Expur- 
gatorius," or burned at St. Paul's Cross, as com- 
pounded of heresy and blasphemy, — as it would 
have been by those who dwelt or congregated at 
Fulham at the time it was written, — it should be 
sacredly guarded among the heirlooms of the palace 
and its successive occupants! How much more it 
would have delighted him to know that so much of 
the simplicity and liberality of form and faith which 



39 

it portrayed and inculcated, would be cherished and 
exemplified by more than one of those under whose 
official custody it was in these latter days to fall ! 

Few persons, I presume, will doubt that had the 
Church of England, between 1608 and 1620, been 
what it is to-day, and its Bishops and Archbishops 
such in life and in spirit as those who have recently 
presided at London and Canterbury, Brewster and 
Bradford would hardly have left Scrooby, and the 
Mayflower might long have been employed in less 
interesting ways than in bringing Separatists to 
Plymouth Rock. As that church and its prelates 
then were, let us thank God that such Separatists 
were found! An Episcopalian myself, by election 
as well as by education, and warmly attached to the 
forms and the faith in which I was brought up ; believ- 
ing that the Church of England has rendered inesti- 
mable service to the cause of religion in furnishing 
a safe and sure anchorage in so many stormy times, 
when the minds of men were " tossed to and fro, 
and carried about with every wind of doctrine;" 
and prizing that very prayer-book, — which was dis- 
owned and discarded by Bradford and Brewster, 
and by Winthrop, too, — as second only to the Bible 
in the richness of its treasures of prayer and praise; 
I yet rejoice, as heartily as any Congregationalist 
who listens to me, that our Pilgrim Fathers were 
Separatists. 

I rejoice, too, that the Puritan Fathers of Mas- 



40 

sachusetts, who followed them to these shores 
ten years afterwards, — though, to the last, they 
" esteemed it their honor to call the Church of 
England their dear mother, and could not part from 
their native country, where she specially resideth, 
without much sadness of heart and many tears," — 
were, if not technically and professedly, yet to all 
intents and purposes. Separatists, also; — Semi- 
Separatists at least, as Robinson himself was called 
when he wrote and published that book which so 
offended the Brownists. I rejoice that the prelatical 
assumptions and tyrannies of that day were re- 
sisted. The Church of England would never have 
been the noble church it has since become, had 
there been no seasonable protest against its cor- 
ruptions, its extravagant formalism, and its over- 
bearing intolerance. The earliest Separatists were 
those who separated from Rome; and when some- 
thing more than a disposition was manifested to 
return towards Rome, in almost every thing except 
the acknowledgment of its temporal supremacy, 
another separation could not have been, ought 
not to have been, avoided. A serious renewal of 
such manifestations at this day, I need not say, 
would rend the Anglican Church asunder ; and its 
American daughter would, under similar circum- 
stances, deservedly share its fate. Pretensions of 
human infallibility need not be proclaimed by an 
Ecumenical Council in order to be offensive and 



41 

abhorrent. It does not require a conclave of Cardi- 
nals to render assumptions and proscriptions and 
excommunications odious. Convocations and Con- 
ventions, and even Synods and Councils and Confer- 
ences, will answer just as well. When so much of 
the discipline of the English Church was devoted to 
matters of form and ceremony; when spiritualism 
was in danger of forgetting its first syllable, and of 
degenerating into an empty ritualism; when godly 
ministers were silenced for "scrupling the vest- 
ments," or for preaching an evening lecture, and men 
and women and children were punished for not bow- 
ing in the Creed, or kneeling at the altar, or for hav- 
ing family pra3^ers under their own roof, — separation 
— call it Schism, if you will — was the true resort 
and the only remedy. For the sake of the church 
itself, but a thousand-fold more for the sake of 
Christianity, which is above all churches, it was 
needful that a great example of such a separation 
should be exhibited at all hazards and at any sacri- 
fice. The glorious Luther, to whose memory that 
majestic monument has so recently been erected at 
Worms, had furnished such an example in his own 
day and land, and with relation to the church of 
which he had once been a devoted disciple. No 
name ma}^ be compared with his name in the grand 
calendar of Separatists. But our Pilgrim Fathers 
were humble followers in the same path of Protes- 
tantism, and thanks be to God that their hearts were 



42 

inspired and emboldened to imitate his heroic 
course. 

I would not seem too harsh towards those old 
prelates of the English Church, by whom Pilgrims 
or Puritans were persecuted. Sir James Mackin- 
tosh, I think, has somewhere said, that if the United 
Netherlands had erected a statue to the real author 
of all their liberties, it would have been to the Duke 
of Alva, whose abominable tyranny goaded the 
Dutch to desperation, and drove them into re- 
bellion. I am not sure that, on this principle. New 
England might not well include Bancroft and Laud 
in her gallery of eminent benefactors. We must 
never forget, however, that almost all great move- 
ments are but the resultants of opposing forces; and 
that, in impressing upon them their final shape and 
direction, those who resist are hardly less effective 
than those who support and urge. Nor can it be 
forgotten that, in the turn of the wheel of England's 
fortunes, poor Laud was himself destined to per- 
secution and martyrdom. It must have been a grim 
joke, when Hugh Peters and others proposed to send 
him over to New England for punishment, as his 
Breviate tells us they did; and it might be a matter 
for curious conjecture what would have happened to 
him, had he come here then. But the meekness 
and bravery and Christian heroism with which he 
bore his fate, when so wantonly and barbarously 
brought to the block, after four years of imprison- 



43 

ment in the Tower, are almost enough to make us 
forget that he was ever so haughty and insolent and 
cruel, and quite enough to extinguish all resentment 
of his wronofs. 

But let me not longer delay to acknowledge, on 
this occasion, the deep debt which New England and 
our whole country owes to the Congregationalism 
which the Pilgrims established on our soil, and of 
which the very first church in America was planted 
by them here at Plymouth. My whole heart is in 
sympathy with the celebration of this Jubilee to be 
held in my native city, this evening, by the Con- 
gregationalists of our land. They would wrong 
themselves, indeed, as well as all who are not of 
their own communion, were they to celebrate it in 
any narrow, controversial spirit, and to turn a 
national into a merely denominational anniversary. 
But it would be doing them deep injustice to suggest 
or imagine such a thing. They have a right to cele- 
brate it, and they will celebrate it, as a day whose 
associations and influences have far outreached every 
thing sectarian and every thing sectional, and which 
are as comprehensive as the land they live in, and 
as all-embracing as the Christianity they profess 
and cherish. 

Few persons, if any, can hesitate to agree with 
them, that no other system of church government 
than Congregationalism could have been successful 
in New England at that day. No other system 



44 

could have done so much for religion ; no other 
S3'stem could have done so much for liberty, re- 
ligious or civil. "The meeting-house, the school- 
house, and the training field," said old John Adams, 
"are the scenes where New England men were 
formed." He did not intend to omit the town- 
house, for no one was more sensible than himself 
how much of New England education and charac- 
ter was owing to our little municipal organizations, 
and to the free consultations and discussions of our 
little town meetings. But he was right in naming 
" the meeting-house " first. Certainly, for the cause 
of religious freedom, no other security could have 
compared with the independent system of church 
government. Independent churches prepared the 
way for Independent States and an Independent 
Nation; and formed the earliest and most enduring 
barriers and bulwarks at once against hierarchies 
and monarchies. 

That work fully and finally accomplished, and 
civil and religious freedom securely established, we 
may all be more than content, we all ought to 
rejoice, as we witness the association and the pros- 
perous advancement, under whatever name or form 
they may choose to enroll themselves, of "all who 
profess and call themselves Christians," — studying 
ever, as Edward Winslow tells us the sainted 
Robinson studied, towards his latter end, " peace 
and union as far as might agree with faith and a 



45 

good conscience." Let those who will, indulge in 
the dream, or cherish the waking vision, of a single 
universal Church on earth, recognized and accepted 
of men, whose authority is binding on every con- 
science and decisive of every point of faith or form. 
To the' eye of God, indeed, such a Church may be 
visible even now, in "the blessed company of all 
faithful people," in whatever region they may dwell, 
with whatever organization they may be connected, 
with Him as their head, "of whom the whole family 
in earth and heaven is named." And as, in some 
grand orchestra, hundreds of performers, each with 
his own instrument and his own separate score, strike 
widely variant notes, and produce sounds, some- 
times in close succession and sometimes at length- 
ened intervals, which heard alone would seem to 
be wanting in every thing like method or melody, 
but which heard together are found delighting 
the ear, and ravishing the soul, with a flood of 
magnificent harmony, as they give concerted ex- 
pression to the glowing conceptions of some mighty 
master, like him, the centennial anniversary of 
whose birthday has just been commemorated, — 
even so, — even so, it may be, — from the differing, 
broken, and often seemingly discordant strains of 
sincere seekers after God, the Divine ear, upon 
which no lisp of the voice or breathing of the heart 
is ever lost, catches only a combined and glorious 
anthem of prayer and praise! 



46 

But to human ears such harmonies are not vouch- 
safed. The Church, In all its majestic unity, shall 
be revealed hereafter. The "Jerusalem, which is 
the mother of us all, is above;" and we can only 
humbly hope that, in the providence of God, its gates 
shall be wider, and its courts fuller, and its members 
quickened and multiplied, by the very differences of 
form and of doctrine which have divided Christians 
from each other on earth, and which have created 
something of competition and rivalry, and even of 
contention, in their efforts to advance the ends of 
their respective denominations. Absolute religious 
uniformity, as poor human nature is now constituted, 
would but too certainly be the cause, if it were not 
itself the consequence, of absolute religious indiffer- 
ence and stagnation. 

Pardon me, fellow-citizens and friends, for a 
digression, — if it be one, — in which I may almost 
seem to have forgotten that I have been privileged 
to occupy this pulpit only for a temporary and 
secular purpose, and to have encroached on the pre- 
rogative of its stated incumbent; but coming here, 
at your flattering call, to unite in the commemoration 
of those whose special distinction it was to have 
separated from the communion to which I rejoice 
to belong, I could not resist the impulse to give 
utterance to thoughts which are always uppermost 
in my mind, when I reflect on this period of New 
England history. I hasten now to resume and to 



47 

finish the thread of that Pilgrim narrative which is 
the legitimate theme of my discourse. 

I must not detain you for a moment by the details 
of that perilous voyage across the Atlantic, w^ith its 
" many fierce storms, with which the ship was 
badly shaken and her upper works made very leaky; 
and one of the mainbeams in the midships bowed 
and cracked." I must not detain you by dwelling 
on that " serious consultation " in mid-ocean about 
putting back, when " the great iron screw which 
the passengers brought out of Holland " was so 
providentially found " for the buckling of the main- 
beam," and "raising it into his place." All this is 
described in the journal of Bradford with a pathos 
and a power which could not be surpassed. 

I must not detain you either by attempting to 
portray, in any words of my own, their arrival, on the 
2ist of November, within the sheltering arm of 
yonder noble Cape, — "the coast fringed with ice — 
dreary forests, interspersed with sandy tracts, filling 
the background;" — "no friendly light-houses, as 
yet, hanging out their cressets on your headlands; 
no brave pilot boat hovering like a sea-bird on the 
tops of the waves, to guide the shattered bark to its 
harbor; no charts and soundings making the secret 
pathways of the deep plain as a gravelled road 
through a lawn." All this was depicted, at the 
great second-centennial celebration of the settle- 
ment of Barnstable, by my lamented friend Edward 



48 

Everett, with a grandeur of diction and imagery 
which no living orator can approach. They seem 
still ringing in my ear from his own lips, — for I 
was by his side on that occasion, and no one who 
heard him on that day can ever forget his tones or 
his words, as, " with a spirit raised above mere 
natural agencies," he exclaimed, — " I see the moun- 
tains of New England rising from their rocky 
thrones. They rush forward into the ocean, settling 
down as they advance, and there they range them- 
selves, a mighty bulwark around the heaven-directed 
vessel. Yes, the everlasting God himself stretches 
out the arm of his mercy and his power in substan- 
tial manifestation, and gathers the meek company 
of his worshippers as in the hollow of his hand! " 

Nor will I detain you for a moment on the sim- 
ple but solemn covenant which the Pilgrim Fathers 
formed and signed in the cabin of the Mayflower on 
that same 2 1 st of November, — the earliest " original 
compact " of self-government of which we have any 
authentic record in the annals of our race. That 
has had ample illustration on many other occasions, 
and has just been the subject of special commem- 
oration by the New England Historic-Genealogical 
Society in Boston. 

I turn at once to what concerns this day and this 
hour. I turn at once to that third exploring party 
which left the Mayflower — not quite blown up by 
the rashness of a mischievous boy, and still riding 



49 

at anchor in Cape Cod harbor — on the i6th of 
December; and for whose wanderings in search of 
a final place of settlement our friend Dr. Dexter has 
supplied so precise a chronological table. I turn to 
those "ten of our men," with "two of our seamen," 
and with six of the ship's company, — eighteen in 
all, — in an open shallop, who, after spending a 
large part of two days "in getting clear of a sandy 
point, which lay within less than a furlong of the 
ship," — "the weather being ver}' cold and hard," 
two of their number " ver}^ sick " and one of them 
almost " swooning with the cold," and the gunner 
for a day and a night seemingly " sick unto death," 
— found "smoother water and better sailing" on 
the 17th, but "so cold that the water froze on their 
clothes and made them many times like coats of 
iron;" who were startled at midnight by "a great 
and hideous cry," and after a fearful but triumphant 
" first encounter," early the next morning, with a 
band of Indians, who assailed them with savage 
yells and showers of arrows, and after a hardly less 
fearful encounter with a furious storm, which " split 
their mast in three pieces," and swept them so far 
upon the breakers that the cry was suddenly heard 
from the helmsman, " About with her, or else we are 
all cast away," found themselves at last, when the 
darkness of midnight had almost overtaken them, 
"under the lee of a small island, and remained all that 
night in safety," " keeping their watch in the rain." 



;o 



There thev passed the 19th. exploring t±ie island, 
and perhaps repairing their shattered mast. The 
record is brief but suggestive : " Here we made 
our rendezvous all that day, being Saturday.*^ But 
briefer still, and how much more suggestive and 
significant, is the entry of the following day I — 

'* 10. (20) of December, on the Sabboth day wee 
rested/^ 

I pause, — I pause for a moment, — at that most 
impressive record. Among all the marvellous con- 
cisenesses and tersenesses of a Thucydides or a Taci- 
tus, — condensing a whole chapter of philosophy, or 
the whole character of an individual or a people, into 
the compass of a motto, — I know of nothing terser 
or more condensed than this ; nor any thing •which 
develops and expands, as we ponder it, into a fuller 
or finer or more characteristic picture of those whom 
it describes. ^ On the Sabbath day we rested." It 
was no mere secular or physical rest. The day 
before had sufficed for that. But alone, upon a 
desert island, in the depths of a stormy winter : well- 
nigh without food, wholly without shelter: after a 
■week of such experiences, such exposure and hard- 
ship and sutFering, that the bare recital at this hour 
almost fi*eezes our blood; without an idea that the 
morrow should be other or better than the day 
before ; ivith every conceivable motive, on their own 
account, and on account of those whom they had 
left in the ship, to lose not an instant of time, but 



51 

to hasten and hurry forward to the completion of 
the work of exploration which they had undertaken, 
— they still " remembered the Sabbath day to keep 
it holy.'' " On the Sabbath day we rested.'' 

It does not require one to sympathize with the 
extreme Sabbatarian strictness of Pilgrim or Puri- 
tan, in order to be touched by the beauty of such 
a record and of such an example. I know of no 
monument on the face of the earth, ancient or 
modern, which would appeal more forcibly to the 
hearts of all who reverence an implicit and heroic 
obedience to the commandments of God, than would 
an unadorned stone on yonder Clark's island, with 
the simple inscription, "20 Dec. 1620 — On the 
Sabbath day we rested." There is none to which 
I would myself more eagerl}' conti'ibute. But it 
should be paid for by the penny contributions of 
the Sabbath-school children of all denominations 
throughout the land, among whom that beautiful 
Jubilee Medal has just been distributed. 

And what added interest is given to that record, 
what added force to that example, by the immediate 
sequel I The record of the very next day runs, — 
" On Monday we sounded the harbour and found it 
a very good harbour for our shipping; we marched 
also into the land, and found divers corn-fields and 
little running brooks, a place very good for situation; 
so we returned to our ship again with good news to 
the rest of our people, which did much comfort 
their hearts." 



52 

That was the day, my friends, which we are here 
to commemorate. On that Monday, the 21st of 
December, 1620, from a single shallop, those "ten 
of our men," with "two of our seamen," and with 
six of the ship's company, landed upon this shore. 
The names of almost all of them are given, and 
should not fail of audible mention on an occasion 
like this. Miles Standish heads the roll. John 
Carver comes second. Then follow William Brad- 
ford, Edward Winslow, John Tilley, Edward Tilley, 
John Rowland, Richard Warren, Steven Hopkins, 
and Edward Dote3^ The " two of our seamen " 
were John Alderton and Thomas English; and the 
two of the ship's company whose names are recorded 
were Master Copin and Master Clarke, from the 
latter of whom the Sabbath island was called. 

They have landed. They have landed at last, 
after sixty-six days of weary and perilous naviga- 
tion since bidding a final farewell to the receding 
shores of their dear native country. They have 
landed at last; and when the sun of that day went 
down, after the briefest circuit of the year, New 
England had a place and a name — a permanent 
place, a never to be obliterated name — in the his- 
tory, as well as in the geography, of civilized 
Christian man. 

" They whom once the desert beach 
Pent within its bleak domain, — 
Soon their ample sway shall stretch 
O'er the plenty of the plain ! " 



53 

I will not say that the corner-stone of New 
England had quite yet been laid. But its sym- 
bol and perpetual synonyme had certainly been 
found. That one grand Rock, — even then with- 
out its fellow along the shore, and destined to be 
without its fellow on any shore throughout the 
world, — Nature had laid it, — The Architect of the 
Universe had laid it, — " when the morning stars sang 
together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." 
There it had reposed, unseen of human eye, the 
storms and floods of centuries beating and breaking 
upon it. There it had reposed, awaiting the slow- 
coming feet, which, guided and guarded by no mere 
human power, were now to make it famous for ever. 
The Pilgrims trod it, as it would seem, uncon- 
sciously, and left nothing but authentic tradition to 
identify it. "Their rock was not as our rock." Their 
thoughts at that hour were upon no stone of earthly 
mould. If they observed at all what was beneath 
their feet, it may indeed have helped them still 
more fervently to lift their eyes to Him who had 
been predicted and promised "as the shadow of a 
great rock in a weary land;" and may have given 
renewed emphasis to the psalm which perchance 
they may have recalled, — " From the end of the 
earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is over- 
whelmed: lead me to the rock that is higher than I." 
Their trust was only on the Rock of Ages. 

We have had many glowing descriptions and not 



54 

a few elaborate pictures of this day's doings; and it 
has sometimes been a matter of contention whether 
Mary Chilton or John Alden first leapt upon the 
shore, — a question which the late Judge Davis pro- 
posed to settle by humorousl}'^ suggesting that the 
friends of John Alden should give place to the lady, 
as a matter of gallantry. But the Mayflower, with 
John Alden, and Mary Chilton, and all the rest of 
her sex, and all the children, was still in the harbor 
of Cape Cod. The aged Brewster, also, was on 
board the Mayflower with them; and sorely needed 
must his presence and consolation have been, as 
poor Bradford returned to the ship, after a week's 
absence, to find that his wife had fallen overboard 
and was drowned the very day after his departure. 

I may not dwell on these or any other details, 
except to recall the fact that on Friday, the 25th, 
they weighed anchor, — it was Christmas Day, 
though they did not recognize it, as so many of us 
are just preparing to recognize it, as the brightest 
and best of all the days of the year; — that on Satur- 
day, the 26th, the Mayflower " came safely into a 
safe harbour; " and that on Monday, the 28th, the 
landing was completed. Not only was the time 
come and the place found, but the whole company 
of those who were for ever to be associated with that 
time and that place were gathered at last where we 
are now gathered to do homage to their memory. 

I make no apology, sons and daughters of New 



55 

England, for having kept always in the foreground 
of the picture I have attempted to draw^, the relig- 
ious aspects and incidents of the event we have 
come to commemorate. Whatever civil or political 
accompaniments or consequences that event may 
have had, it was in its rise and progress, in its incep- 
tion and completion, eminently and exclusively a 
religious movement. The Pilgrims left Scrooby as 
a church. They settled in Amsterdam and in 
Leyden as a church. They embarked in the May- 
flower as a church. They came to New England 
as a church; and Morton, at the close of the intro- 
duction to Bradford's History, as given by Dr. Young 
in his Chronicles, entitles it " The Church of Christ 
at Plymouth in New England, first begun in Old 
England, and carried on in Holland and Plymouth 
aforesaid." They had no license, indeed, from 
either Pope or Primate. It was a church not only 
without a bishop, but without even a pastor; with 
only a layman to lead their devotions and administer 
their discipline. A grand layman he was, — Elder 
Brewster: it would be well for the world if there 
were more laymen like him, at home and abroad. 
In yonder Bay, it is true, before setting foot on Cape 
Cod, they entered into a compact of civil govern- 
ment; but the reason expressly assigned for so doing 
was, that " some of the strangers amongst them 
{i. e., not Leyden men, but adventurers who joined 
them in England) had let fall in the ship that when 



S6 

they came ashore they would use their own liberty, 
for none had power to command them," or, as else- 
where stated, because they had observed " some not 
well affected to unity and concord, but gave some 
appearance of faction." They came as a Church: all 
else was incidental, the result of circumstances, a 
protection against outsiders. They came to secure 
a place to worship God according to the dictates of 
their own consciences, free from the molestations 
and persecutions which they had encountered in 
England; and free, too, from the uncongenial sur- 
roundings, the irregular habits of life, the strange 
and uncouth language, the licentiousness of youth, 
the manifold temptations, and " the neglect of obser- 
vation of the Lord's day as a Sabbath," which they 
had so lamented in Holland. 

We cannot be too often reminded that it was 
religion which effected the first permanent settle- 
ment in New England. All other motives had 
failed. Commerce, the fisheries, the hope of dis- 
covering mines, the ambition of founding Colonies, 
all had been tried, and all had failed. But the Pil- 
grims asked of God; and "He gave them the 
heathen for their inheritance, and the uttermost 
parts of the earth for their possession." Religious 
faith and fear, religious hope and trust, — the fear 
of God, the love of Christ, an assured faith in the 
Holy Scriptures, and an assured hope of a life of 
bliss and blessedness to come, — these, and these 



57 

alone, proved sufficient to animate and strengthen 
them for the endurance of all the toils and trials 
which such an enterprise involved. Let it never 
be forgotten that if the corner-stone of New Eng- 
land was indeed laid by the Pilgrim Fathers, two 
centuries and a half ago to-day, it was in the cause 
of religion they laid it; and whatever others may 
have built upon it since, or may build upon it here- 
after, — "gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, 
stubble," — God forbid that on this Anniversary the 
foundation should be ignored or repudiated! 

As we look back ever so cursorily on the great 
procession of American History as it starts from yon- 
der Rock, and winds on and on and on to the present 
hour, we may descry many other scenes, many other 
actors, remote and recent, in other parts of the 
Union as well as in our own, of the highest interest 
and importance. There are Conant and Endicott 
with their little rudimental plantations at Cape Ann 
and at Salem. There is the elder Winthrop, with 
the Massachusetts Charter, at Boston, of whom the 
latest and best of New England Historians (Dr. 
Palfrey) has said " that it was his policy, more than 
any other man's, that organized into shape, animated 
with practical vigor, and prepared for permanency, 
those primeval sentiments and institutions that have 
directed the course of thought and action in New 
England in later times." There is the younger 
Winthrop, not far behind, with the Charter of Con- 



S8 

nectlcut, of whose separate Colonies Hooker and 
Haynes and Hopkins and Eaton and Davenport and 
Ludlow had laid the foundations. There is Roger 
Williams, " the Apostle of soul freedom," as he has 
been called, with the Charter of Rhode Island. 
There is the brave and generous Stuyvesant of the 
New Netherlands. There are the Catholic Calverts, 
and the noble Quaker Penn, building up Maryland 
and Pennsylvania alike, upon principles of toleration 
and philanthropy. There is the benevolent and 
chivalrous Oglethorpe, assisted by Whitefieldand the 
sainted Wesleys, planting his Moravian Colony in 
Georgia. There is Franklin, with his first proposal of 
a Continental Union, and with his countless inven- 
tions in political as well as physical science. There 
is James Otis with his great argument against Writs 
of Assistance, and Samuel Adams with his inexor- 
able demand for the removal of the British regi- 
ments from Boston. There are Quincy with his 
grand remonstrance against the Port Bill, and War- 
ren, offering himself as the Proto-martyr on Bunker 
Hill. There is Jefferson with the Declaration of 
Independence fresh from his own pen, with John 
Adams close at his side, as its " Colossus on the 
floor of Congress." There are Hamilton and Madi- 
son and Jay bringing forward the Constitution in 
their united arms; and there, leaning on their 
shoulders, and on that Constitution, but towering 
above them all, is Washington, the consummate 



59 

commander, the incomparable President, the world- 
honored Patriot. There are Marshall and Story as 
the expounders of the Constitution, and Webster as 
its defender. There is John Quincy Adams with 
his powerful and persistent plea for the sacred 
Right of Petition. There is Jackson with his Proc- 
lamation against Nullification. There is Lincoln 
with his ever memorable Proclamation of Emanci- 
pation. And there, closing for the moment that 
procession of the dead, — for I presume not to mar- 
shal the living, — is George Peabody, with his world- 
wide munificence and his countless benefactions. 
Other figures may present themselves to other eyes 
as that grand Panorama is unrolled. Other figures 
will come into view as that great procession ad- 
vances. But be it prolonged, as we pray God it may 
be, even " to the crack of doom," first and foremost, 
as it moves on and on in radiant files, — "searing 
the eyeballs " of oppressors and tyrants, but rejoic- 
ing the hearts of the lovers of freedom throughout 
the world, — will ever be seen and recognized the 
men whom we commemorate to-day, — the Pilgrim 
Fathers of New England. No herald announces 
their approach. No pomp or parade attends their 
advent. "Shielded and helmed and weapon'd with 
the truth," no visible guards are around them, 
either for honor or defence. Bravely but humbly, 
and almost unconsciously, they assume their peril- 
ous posts, as pioneers of an advance which is to 



6o 

know no backward steps, until, throughout this 
Western hemisphere, it shall have prepared the 
way of the Lord and of liberty. They come with 
no charter of human inspiration. They come with 
nothing but the open Bible in their hands, leading a 
march of civilization and human freedom, which 
shall go on until time shall be no more, — if only 
that Bible shall remain open, and shall be accepted 
and reverenced, by their descendants as it was by 
themselves, as the Word of God! 

It is a striking coincidence that while they were 
just taking the first steps in the movement which 
terminated at Plymouth Rock, that great clerical 
Commission was appointed by King James, which 
prepared what has everywhere been received as the 
standard English version of the Holy Scriptures; 
and which, though they continued to use the Geneva 
Bible themselves, has secured to their children and 
posterity a translation which is the choicest treasure 
of literature as well as of religion. Nor can I fail 
to remember, with the warmest interest, that, at this 
moment, while we are engaged in this Fifth Jubilee 
Commemoration, a similar Commission is employed, 
for the first time, in subjecting that translation to the 
most critical revision; — not with a view, certainly, 
to attempt any change or improvement of its incom- 
parable style and language, but only to purge the 
sacred volume from every human interpolation or 
error. 



6i 

No more beautiful scene has been witnessed in 
our day and generation, nor one more auspicious 
of that Christian unity which another world shall 
witness, if not this, than the scene presented in 
Westminster Abbey, in the exquisite chapel of 
Henry VII., by that Revision Commission, in imme- 
diate preparation for entering on tlieir great task, on 
the morning of the 22d of June last; — "such a 
scene," as the accomplished Dean Alford has well 
said, " as has not been enacted since the name of 
Christ was first named in Britain." I can use no 
other words than his, in describing it: "Between 
the latticed shrine of King Henry VII. and the flat 
pavement tomb of Edward VI. was spread ^ God's 
board,' and round that pavement tomb knelt, shoul- 
der to shoulder, bishops and dignitaries of the 
Church of England, professors of her Universities, 
divines of the Scottish Presbyterian and Free 
Churches, and of the Independent, Baptist, Wes- 
leyan. Unitarian Churches in England, — a repre- 
sentative assembly, such as our Church has never 
before gathered under her wing, of the Catholic 
Church by her own definition, — of ^ all who profess 
and call themselves Christians.' " It was a scene to 
give character to an age; and should the commis- 
sion produce no other valuable fruit, that opening 
Communion will make it memorable to the end of 
time. 

Yes, the open Bible was the one and all-sufficient 



62 



support and reliance of the Pilgrim Fathers. They 
looked, indeed, for other and greater reformations 
in religion than any which Luther or Calvin had 
accomplished or advocated; but they looked for 
them to come from a better understanding and a 
more careful study of the Holy Scriptures, and not 
from any vainglorious human wisdom or scientific 
investigations. As their pastor Robinson said, in 
his farewell discourse, " He was confident the Lord 
had more truth and light yet to break forth out of 
his Holy Word." 

Let me not seem, my friends, to exaggerate the 
importance to our country of the event which we 
this day celebrate. The Pilgrims of the Mayflower 
did not establish the earliest permanent English set- 
tlement within the territories which now constitute 
our beloved country. I would by no means over- 
look or disparage the prior settlement at Jamestown 
in Virginia. The Old Dominion, with all its direct 
and indirect associations with Sir Walter Raleigh, 
and with Shakspeare's accomplished patron and 
friend, the Earl of Southampton, — with Pocahon- 
tas, too, and Captain John Smith, — must always be 
remembered by the old Colony with the respect 
and affection due to an elder sister. " I said an 
elder, not a better." Yet we may well envy some of 
her claims to distinction. More than ten years 
before an English foot had planted itself on the soil 
of New England, that Virginia Colony had effected 



63 

a settlement ; and more than a year before the 
landing of the Pilgrims, — on the 30th of July, 
1619, — the first Representative Legislative Assem- 
bly ever held v^'ithin the limits of the United States 
was convened at Jamestown. That Assembly 
passed a significant Act against drunkenness; and 
an Act somewhat quaint in its terms and provis- 
ions, but whose influence might not be unwhole- 
some at this day, against "excessive apparel," — 
providing that every man should be assessed in 
the church for all public contributions, " if he be 
unmarried, according to his own apparel; if he 
be married, according to his own and his wife's, 
or either of their apparel." Such a statute would 
have been called puritanical, if it had emanated 
from a New England Legislature. It might even 
now, however, do something to diminish the di- 
mensions, and simplify the material, and abate the 
luxurious extravagance, of modern dress. But that 
first Jamestown Assembly passed another most 
noble Act, for the conversion of the Indians and 
the education of their children, which entitles Vir- 
ginia to claim pre-eminence, or certainly priority, 
in that great work of Christian philanthropy, for 
which our Fathers, with glorious John Eliot at their 
head, did so much, and for which their sons, alas! 
have accomplished so little, — unless, perhaps, 
under the new and noble Indian policy of the last 
twelve months. The political organization of Vir- 



64 

ginia was almost mature, while that of New England 
was still in embryo. 

Again, I do not forget that the Pilgrims of the 
Mayflower built up no great City or Commonwealth. 
Within the first three months after their landing, 
one-half of their number had fallen victims to the 
rigors of the climate and the hardships of their 
condition; and at the end of ten years the whole 
population of the Colony — men, women, and chil- 
dren — did not exceed three hundred. The}'^ were 
but as a voice in the desert; but it was a glorious 
voice, and one which was destined to reverberate 
around the world, and ring along the ages with 
still increasing emphasis. Other Colonies, by the 
inspiration and encouragement of their example, 
soon succeeded them, and did the substantial work 
for which they only prepared the wa}'; for which 
they, as they said themselves, were but " stepping- 
stones." The great " Suffolk Emigration " of 1630, 
— " The Governor and Company of the Massachu- 
setts Bay," — coming over in eleven ships, with the 
whole government and its Charter, were the main 
founders and builders of the grand old Common- 
wealth, of which the Plymouth Colony, sixty years 
afterwards, became an honored part. 

It is pleasant to remember how harmoniously 
and lovingly the two Colonies lived together. It is 
pleasant to remember that parting charge of John 
Cotton to the Massachusetts Company, at South- 



65 

ampton, "that they should take advice of them at 
Plymouth, and do nothing to offend them." I can- 
not forget, either, the cordial visit of Governor 
Bradford to Governor Winthrop in 163 1; nor that 
Winthrop soon afterwards subjected himself to 
reproach for supplying the Pilgrims with powder, 
at his personal cost, in a moment of their urgent 
danger and distress. Still less can I forget that 
October day in 1632, when Governor Winthrop 
returned Bradford's visit, coming a large part of 
the way here on foot, and crossing the river on the 
back of his guide; and when Bradford and Brews- 
ter and Roger Williams and Winthrop, with John 
Wilson, the first pastor of Boston, were together 
on this spot, engaging in religious discourse, 
and partaking of the Sacrament together. That 
most impressive and memorable Communion was 
at once the harbinger and the pledge, the predic- 
tion and the assurance, of the peace and harmony, 
the co-operation and concord, which were long 
to prevail between the infant Colonies of New 
England. 

True, there were some shades of difference in the 
religious sentiment and in the civil administration 
of the various plantations, as they were successively 
developed. The charges of intolerance, bigotry, 
superstition, and persecution, which there seems to 
have been a special delight, in some quarters, of late 
years, in arraying against our New England Fathers 



66 

and founders, apply without doubt more directly to 
other Colonies, than to that whose landing we this 
day commemorate. The Pilgrims in their narrow 
retreat of rock and sand were but little disturbed 
by " intruders and dissentients," — as my friend 
Dr. Ellis has so well classified them, — and could 
afford to be less rigid in their admissions and ex- 
clusions. Their leaders, too, were perhaps of a 
somewhat more lenient and liberal temper than 
those who settled elsewhere. Let them have all 
the honor which belongs to them; and let censure 
and condemnation fall wherever it is deserved! 
I am not here to justify or excuse all the extrava- 
gances, superstitions, or persecutions of the Puritan 
Colonists. But still less am I here to pander to the 
prurient malignity of those who are never weary 
of prying into the petty faults and follies of our 
Fathers, and who seem to gloat and exult in holding 
them up to the ridicule and reproach of their chil- 
dren. As if those great hearts, whether of 1620 
or 1630, had fled into the wilderness to assert and 
vindicate a broad, abstract, unqualified doctrine of 
religious liberty, or even of religious toleration, to 
which they had afterwards proved recreant them- 
selves! As if the precarious circumstances of their 
condition — with savage foes watching to extirpate 
them, with famine ever staring them in the face, 
with disease and death menacing them in every 
shape and at every turn — did not constrain and 



67 

compel them, in the earlier stages of their career, 
to adopt the principle of excluding from their 
community any and all who were bent upon intro- 
ducing contention and discord, and of enforcing 
among themselves something of that stern martial 
rule which belongs to a besieged camp! Why, 
even Roger Williams himself was forced to intro- 
duce a right of exclusion, or non-admission, into 
his original articles of settlement at Providence. 
We can never too often recall the language of the 
late venerable Josiah Quincy, — the last man of our 
day and generation — I had almost said of any day 
and generation — to palliate real bigotry or wanton 
intolerance, — when he said, in his masterly Dis- 
course on the Second Centennial Anniversary of the 
Settlement of Boston in 1630: "Had our early 
ancestors adopted the course we at this day are 
apt to deem so eas}^ and obvious, and placed their 
government on the basis of liberty for all sorts of 
consciences, it would have been, in that age, a 
certain introduction of anarchy. . . . The non- 
toleration which characterized our early ancestors, 
from whatever source it may have originated, had 
undoubtedly the effect they intended and wished. 
It excluded from influence, in their infant settle- 
ment, all the friends and adherents of the ancient 
monarchy and hierarchy; all who, from any mo- 
tive, ecclesiastical or civil, were disposed to disturb 
their peace or their churches. They considered it 



68 



a measure of ^self-defence.' And It is unquestion- 
able that it was chiefly instrumental in forming the 
homogeneous and exclusively republican character 
for which the people of New England have, in all 
times, been distinguished; and, above all, that it 
fixed irrevocably in the country that noble security 
for religious liberty, the independent system of 
Church Government." 

But whatever may have been the differences or 
disagreements of the first planters of Plymouth and 
Massachusetts Bay, of New Haven and of Con- 
necticut, at the outset, we all know that in the 
summer of 1643 these four original Colonies estab- 
lished that noble New England Confederation, — the 
model and prototype of the Confederation of 1778, 
which "blended the many-nationed whole in one," 
and carried the thirteen American Colonies through 
the War of Independence, — whose grand and 
comprehensive preamble is alone an ample reply 
to all who would magnify one Colony at the ex- 
pense of another: — 

"Whereas we all came into these parts of Amer- 
ica with one and the same end and aim, namely, to 
advance the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ and 
to enjoy the liberties of the Gospel in purity with 
peace: And whereas in our settling (by a wise 
providence of God) we are further dispersed upon 
the Seacoasts and Rivers than was at first intended, 
so that we cannot according to our desire with 



69 

convenience communicate in one Government and 
Jurisdiction: And whereas we live encompassed 
with people of several Nations and strange lan- 
guages, which hereafter may prove injurious to us 
or our posterity: And forasmuch as the Natives 
have formerly committed sundry insolences and 
outrages upon several plantations of the English, 
and have of late combined themselves against us: 
And seeing by reason of those sad distractions in 
England which they have heard of, and by which 
they know we are hindered from that humble way 
of seeking advice, or reaping those comfortable 
fruits of protection which at other times we might 
well expect : We therefore do conceive it our 
bounden duty without delay to enter into a present 
Consociation amongst ourselves, for mutual help and 
strenpfth in all our future concernments: That as in 
Nation and Religion so in other respects we be 
and continue One, according to the tenor and true 
meaning of the ensuing Articles: Wherefore it is 
full}^ agreed and concluded by and between the 
parties or Jurisdictions above-named, and they 
jointly and severally do by these presents agree 
and conclude. That they all be and henceforth be 
called by the name of The United Colonies of 
New England." 

The very next clause of this remarkable Ordi- 
nance provided as follows : " The said United 
Colonies for themselves and their posterities do 



70 

jointly and severally hereby enter into a firm and 
perpetual league of fi-iendship and amity for offence 
and defence, mutual advice and succour, upon all 
just occasions both for preserving and propagating 
the truth and liberties of the Gospel and for their 
own mutual safety and welfare." And another 
article provided for intrusting the whole manage- 
ment of the Confederation to two Commissioners 
from each of the four Jurisdictions, carefully add- 
ing, " all in Church fellowship with us," — thus 
leaving no shadow of doubt upon the point that it 
was a " Consociation " for religious as well as for 
political peace and unity. 

Accordingly we find among the proceedings of the 
Commissioners at New Haven in 1646 — a meeting 
at which neither Bradford nor Winslow nor either of 
the Winthrops was present, but at which all of the 
four Colonies were fully represented, and to whose 
proceedings all of them ultimately subscribed — 
that most memorable Declaration as to the " Spread- 
ing nature of Error and the dangerous growth and 
effects thereof," " under a deceitful colour of liberty 
of conscience," which recommended, among other 
things, that " Anabaptism, Familism, Antinomian- 
ism, and generally all errours of a like nature," "be 
seasonably and duly suppressed; " and which con- 
cluded with that glowing prediction for New Eng- 
land: " If thus we be for God, he will certainly 
be with us; and though the God of the world (as 



71 

he is styled) be worshipped, and by usurpation set 
upon his throne in the main and greatest part of 
America, yet this small part and portion may be 
vindicated as by the right hand of Jehovah, and 
justl}^ called Emmanuel's land." 

I do not forget that, in reference to the clause 
recommending the suppression of errors, the Pl}^!!- 
outh Commissioners " desired further considera- 
tion;" but the whole Declaration is entered upon 
the Plymouth Records as agreed upon, and was 
ultimately subscribed alike by the Commissioners 
of all the Colonies. 

I do not forget, either, that all New England was 
not included in that Confederation. All that there 
was of New Hampshire was indeed within the 
jurisdiction of Massachusetts. But we miss Rhode 
Island from the historic group. We miss Clarke 
and Coddington and Roger Williams from the roll 
of the Commissioners. It must be borne in mind, 
however, that it was not because the Plantations 
at Providence and the Islands were opposed to the 
Confederation or any of its articles, that they were 
not members of it. Both of them desired and 
solicited admission. " There was yet another, a 
fifth New England Colony (said John Quincy 
Adams in 1843), denied admission into the Union, 
and furnishing, in its broadest latitude, the demon- 
stration of that conscientious, contentious spirit, 
which so signally characterized the English Puri- 



72 

tans of the seventeenth century, the founders of 
New England, of all the liberties of the British 
Nation, and of the ultimate universal freedom of 
the race of man. The founder of the Colony of 
Rhode Island (adds he) w^as Roger Williams, a 
man who may be considered the very impersona- 
tion of this combined conscientious, contentious 
spirit." 

Rhode Island may w^ell afford to bear with equa- 
nimity any charges against the early contentiousness 
of her founders, in view of the glory which that 
very contentiousness has acquired for her on the 
page of history. "Roger Williams (says Bancroft) 
was the first person in modern Christendom to 
assert in its plenitude the doctrine of the liberty of 
conscience, the equality of opinions before the law; 
and in its defence he was the harbinger of Milton, 
the precursor and superior of Jeremy Taylor." 
The man upon whose tombstone such an inscrip- 
tion, — even with some allowances for rhetorical 
exaggeration, — may be justly written, need fear no 
strictures to which other peculiarities of character 
or conduct may subject him. I have an hereditary 
disposition, too, to be not only just but tender 
towards his memory, for Williams and the Win- 
throps of old, in spite of all differences, were most 
loving friends from first to last. I would palliate 
not a particle of the persecution or cruelty which 
he suffered; from whatever source it may have 



73 

proceeded, or by whomever it may have been 
prompted. There was an heroic grandeur in his 
endurance and fortitude; there was an unsparing 
self-devotion in his care for the Indians; there was 
a simplicit}', sincerity, and earnestness in his whole 
career and character, — which must ever command 
our warmest sympathy and admiration. 

But it would be gross injustice to our other New 
England Fathers, and especiall}^ to our Massa- 
chusetts Fathers, not to admit that the conduct of 
Williams, in some of its earlier manifestations, 
was too precipitate and turbulent to be compatible 
with the peace and safety of the infant Colonies, — 
denying, as Winslow says he did, the lawfulness 
of a public oath, refusing " to allow the colors of 
our nation," and holding forth the unlawfulness of 
the patent from the king; — while the condition 
and temper of the plantations of Rhode Island — 
a State which we now so honor and love, and to 
which we owe more than one of our most valued 
citizens — were such, at that time, as to cause even 
the Plymouth rulers and elders to say: "Concerning 
the Islanders, we have no conversing with them, 
nor desire to have, further than necessity or hu- 
manity may require." 

But with the exception of these Rhode Island 
Plantations, which were still very small and scat- 
tered, New England was then one; one, not only 
as the multiplied States of our American Union 

10 



74 

are one at this day, for civil, political, and military 
purposes; but one, also, in a unity to which our 
Federal Constitution presents no counterpart; — 
one for the preservation and propagation of Relig- 
ion; a Union for the defence and diffusion of pure, 
Protestant Christianity, such as the w^orld had 
hardly ever v^ritnessed before, and may hardly ever 
vv^itness again. It was a grand Experiment, con- 
ceived and instituted for the glory of God and 
the welfare of man's estate. But a hiorher than 
human power had long ago emphatically declared, 
"My Kingdom is not of this world;" and the re- 
sult gave abundant evidence that, on this Continent 
at least, the Temporal and Spiritual power were 
not destined to be wielded successfully by the 
same hands. Church and State were never meant 
to thrive together on American soil. It remains 
to be seen how long they are to thrive together 
anywhere. 

I hasten to the conclusion of this discourse. I 
may not attempt to pursue the thread of Pilgrim 
history further on this occasion. We all know 
what New England has been doing since the days 
of that Confederation. We all know how her sons 
and her daughters, besides founding and building 
up noble institutions within her own limits, have 
sought homes in other parts of the country, near 
and remote, and how powerfully their influence 
and enterprise have everywhere been felt. It 



75 

may safely be said that there is hardly a State, or 
county, or town, or village, on the Continent, in 
which New England men and women are not 
turning their faces towards Plymouth Rock to- 
day with something of the affectionate yearning 
of children towards an ancestral, or even a parental, 
home. We all know what contributions they have 
made to the cause of Education, of Learning, of 
Literature, of Science, and of Art. We all know 
what they have done for Commerce on the ocean, 
and for Industry on the land, vexing every sea with 
their keels, and startling every waterfall with their 
looms. We all know what examples of Patriotism 
and Statesmanship they have exhibited in every 
hour of Colonial or National trial. We do not fail 
to remember that New England led the march to 
Independence at Lexington and Concord and 
Bunker Hill, and that the bones of her sons were 
mingled with almost every soil on which the bat- 
tles of the Revolution were fought. Still less can 
we forget with what alacrit}' and heroic self-sacri- 
fice her bravest and best rushed forth, — so many 
of them, alas ! never to return, — for the defence 
of the Union, in the great struggle which has so 
recently terminated. 

But we are not here to-day to boast of our own 
exploits, or to deal with the events of our own day. 
It becomes us rather to remember our own short- 
comings and our own unworthiness, in view of the 



76 

sublime examples of piety, endurance, and heroic 
valor which were exhibited by those " holy and 
humble men of heart " by whom our Colonies were 
planted. We sometimes assume to sit in judgment 
upon their doings. We often criticise their faults 
and failings. There is a special proneness of late 
years to deride their superstitions and denounce 
their intolerance. And certainly we may well 
rejoice that the days of religious bigotry and pro- 
scription are over in our land. But is it not even 
more true at this hour, than when no less liberal a 
Christian than John Quincy Adams uttered the 
warning, thirty years ago, that the intensely religious 
feelings and prejudices of our infancy have not only 
given way to universal toleration, but " to a liberality 
of doctrine bordering upon the extreme of a falter- 
ing faith"? God forbid that our own religious 
freedom should ever be described as Gibbon 
described that of the age of Antoninus, from which 
he dates the decline and fall of the Roman Empire : 
" The various modes of worship (says he) which 
prevailed in the Roman world were all considered 
by the people as equally true; by the philosophers 
as equally false; and by the magistrates as equally 
useful. And thus toleration produced not only 
mutual indulgence, but even religious concord." 
Such a spirit of toleration, — such religious liberty 
as that, — even in an age of Paganism, gradually led 
to the overthrow of the great Empire of the Old 



. 77 

World. What else but overthrow can it accom- 
plish in a Christian age for the great Republic of the 
New World? 

May it not be wise and well for us all sometimes 
to reflect — and may I not be pardoned for con- 
cluding this discourse by summoning the sons and 
daughters of New England, here and everywhere, 
to reflect this day — what judgment would be pro- 
nounced upon us by our Pilgrim and our Puritan 
Fathers, could they be permitted to behold and to 
comprehend the grand expansion and development 
which we now witness of the institutions which 
they planted ? Could they descend among us, at this 
moment, in bodily presence, and with organs capa- 
ble of embracing at a glance a full perception and 
understanding of every thing which has been accom- 
plished on this wide-spread continent, since they 
were withdrawn from these earthly scenes and 
entered into their rest, — what would they think, 
what would they sa}^ ? 

It is not difficult to imagine the surprise with 
which they would contemplate the existing condition 
of New England, and of the mighty nation of which 
it forms a part. It is not diflficult to imagine the 
astonishment with which they would regard the 
great inventions and improvements of modern 
times. It is not diflficult to imagine the eager and 
incredulous amazement with which Miles Standish, 
for instance, would listen to the click of a little 



78 

machine, almost at his own old doorway, which 
could supply him daily and hourly with the latest 
phases of the big wars in Europe, which in his life- 
time he could only have studied in bulletins, or 
broadsides, or ^^ books of the news," not much less 
than half a year old. It is not difficult to conceive 
the wonder of Edward Winslow, as he should see, 
or be told of, some noble ship traversing the wide 
Atlantic, from Land's End to Cape Cod, with 
undeviating regularity, without sails and against the 
wind, in far less time than he could have relied on 
crossing from one little island to another of the 
Caribbean Sea, before he sunk so sadly beneath its 
waters. It is not difficult to picture the bewilder- 
ment of Brewster and Bradford as the}^ should listen 
to the rattling and whistling and thundering, by day 
and by night, of cars bringing more passengers than 
the whole population of Plymouth in their day, and 
more freight than would have sustained that whole 
population for a winter, not merely from Boston in 
not much more than an hour, but from the shores of 
the Pacific Ocean in not much more than a week! 
It is easy to conceive the consternation of them all, 
could they see this whole assembly, by an almost 
instantaneous flash of sunlight, grouped and pictured 
with an exactness which the most protracted labors 
of ancient or modern art could never have reached. 
It is easy to conceive their rapture should they wit- 
ness the intensest physical agonies of the human 



79 

frame charmed to sleep by the inhalation of the 
vapor of a few drops of ether. It is easy to under- 
stand how astounded they would be, not merely at 
learning that all those phenomena of the celestial 
bodies which had so often perplexed and alarmed 
them were now familiar to every school -boy; but 
at being specially informed that to-morrow there 
should be a great eclipse of the sun, total in some 
parts of the world though hardly visible here; and 
that Science, not satisfied with calculating, by the 
old processes of which they may have heard some- 
thing before, the precise instants of its beginning 
and end, had equipped and sent out formal expedi- 
tions to many distant lands to observe and record 
all its phases and incidents! 

We can readily suppose that such marvels as 
these would not be taken in by them without 
reawakening something of their old superstitious 
fear and awe; and we might expect to hear from 
their lips some exclamations, if not about " the old 
Serpent," certainly about " wonders and more won- 
ders of the invisible world." But we need not resort 
to these miracles of science and art in order to illus- 
trate the surprise and amazement with which our 
Fathers would contemplate the condition of their 
posterity. The mere extent, population, and power 
of our countr}', its great States, its magnificent 
cities, its vast wealth, its commerce, its crops, its 
industr}', its education, its freedom, — no longer a 



8o 

slave upon its soil, — all, all of all races, equal 
before the law, — what else could they desire to 
fill up the measure of our development, or of their 
own delight! What more could they possibly wish 
to complete and crown the vision of glory vouch- 
safed to them? 

Oh, my friends, have you forgotten, or can 3'ou 
imagine that they would forget for an instant, the 
cause in which they came here? Can you believe 
that they would be so dazzled and blinded by the 
glare of mere temporal success and material pros- 
perity, or by the grandeur of intellectual triumphs 
and scientific discoveries and philosophical achieve- 
ments, as to lose sight and thought of that which 
animated — and, I had almost said, constituted — 
their whole mortal existence? Can we not hear 
them inquiring eagerly and earnestly, as they gaze 
upon all around them, " Is the moral welfare of the 
country keeping pace with its material progress? 
Has religion maintained the place we assigned it, 
as the corner-stone of all 3'our institutions? Is the 
Bible, the open Bible, which we brought over in 
our hands, still reverenced of you all as the Word 
of God? Is the Lord's Day still respected and 
observed as a day of religious rest, as we observed 
it on that desolate island before our feet had stept 
upon yonder consecrated rock? Are your houses 
of worship proportionate to your population ? Are 
there worshippers enough, Sunday by Sunday, to 



fill the houses which you have? Are there no 
temples of false prophets — no organized communi- 
ties of licentiousness, under the color of religion — 
in your land? Are there none among you who 
^ seek unto them that have familiar spirits and unto 
wizards that peep and that mutter, — for the living 
to the dead ' ? Are you doing your full part in 
carrying the Gospel to the heathen? Or are you 
waiting until the heathen shall have come over into 
your inheritance, bringing their idols with them, to 
cheapen labor and to dilute your own civilization 
and Christianity? Are your schools and colleges 
still dedicated, as we dedicated at least one of 
them, ^to Christ and the Church'? Is there no 
fear that your science has been emboldened by its 
triumphant successes to overleap the bounds of 
legitimate investigation, putting Nature to the rack 
to wring from her, if it were possible, some denial, 
or some doubt, of that great Original, whom she 
has always rejoiced, and still rejoices, to pro- 
claim? Is there no fear that your philosophy has 
been tempted to transcend the just ^ limits of relig- 
ious thought,' and to set up some material theory, 
or some self-styled positive system, which may se- 
duce the deluded soul from its hope of immortality, 
and weaken, if not destroy, its sense of the need 
of a Saviour? Is there no fear that a sentimental, 
sensational, licentious literature is corrupting the 
tastes and sapping the morals of your children. 



82 



and rendering the universal appetite for reading 
an almost doubtful blessing? Are your charities, 
public and private, numerous and noble as they 
are, altogether commensurate with your w^ealth? 
Or is the larger half of your surplus incomes ab- 
sorbed in a cankering and debasing luxury, de- 
structive alike to the physical, intellectual, and 
spiritual energy of all who indulge in it? Are 
integrity and virtue enthroned in your hearts and 
homes? Have they a recognized and undisputed 
sovereignty in the market-place and on the ex- 
change ? Or are vice and crime making not a few 
days dark, and not a few nights hideous, in your 
crowded cities ? Is there purity and principle and 
honor in your public servants ? Or are corruption 
and intrigue and fraud threatening to make havoc 
of your free institutions, rendering all things venal, 
and almost all things, except mere party disloyalty, 
venial, in your State and National Capitals ? " 

Such questions as these, I am conscious, if com- 
ing from any living lips, or, certainly, from any 
living layman's lips, might be jeered at as savoring 
of sanctimoniousness and fanaticism. I do not pre- 
sume to ask them for myself; much less would I 
presume to answer them. Make what allowance 
you please for the rigid austerity and excessive 
scrupulousness of those for whom I am only an 
interpreter. But does any one deny or doubt that 
they are the very questions which would be asked 



83 

first, and most eagerly and most emphatically, by 
those whom we this day commemorate, and by 
those who were associated with them in founding 
and building up New England? 

Can we not hear them, at this moment, solemnly 
warning us, lest, in the pride of our prosperity and 
greatness, " when our silver and our gold is mul- 
tiplied, and all that we have is multiplied," our 
hearts be lifted up to say, each for himself, " My 
power and the might of mine hand hath gotten 
me this wealth," while the great lesson of our 
stewardship, to Him to whom we owe it all, is 
forgotten or neglected? 

Can we not hear them, at this moment, solemnly 
w^arning us, lest, in the pride of our freedom and 
independence, we forget that "the liberty we are 
to stand for, with the hazard not only of our 
goods, but of our lives if need be," is "a liberty 
for that only which is good, just, and honest," and 
not a liberty to be used as a cloak of malicious- 
ness and licentiousness? 

Can we not hear them, at this moment, from 
yonder hill of graves, solemnly and affectionately 
warning us lest, in the pride of our science, while a 
thousand telescopes and spectroscopes are ready to 
be levelled, on the morrow, at the orb of day, — 
to reveal its chromosphere and its photosphere, to 
measure its tornadoes, to detect the exact nature of 
its corona, and to mark the precise instants of its 



84 

partial or total obscuration, — the Sun of Righteous- 
ness, all unobserved, be dimmed and darkened in 
our own hearts, and an Eclipse of Faith be suffered 
to steal and settle over our land, whose beginning 
may be imperceptible, and its end beyond calcula- 
tion ? 

Oh, let us hear and heed these warnings of the 
fathers to the children, as they come to us to-day, 
enforced not only by all the precious memories of 
their faith and piety, their virtues and sacrifices and 
sufferings, but by all the lessons and experiences 
of the times in which we live! We need not look 
beyond the events of the single year which is just 
closing, — this Annus Mirabilis, compared with 
which that of Dryden and Defoe was without sig- 
nificance or consequence; a year, more marvellous 
in its manifestations than almost any which has pre- 
ceded it since the great year of our Lord, and from 
whose calendar no form of physical, political, or 
religious convulsion seems to have been wanting 
to startle and confound the nations; a 3^ear, whose 
Christmas, alas! is clouded and saddened by the 
continuance, in a land bound to us by memories 
not yet obliterated, of a conflict and a carnage 
which must fill every Christian heart with horror, 
and for the termination of which we would de- 
voutly invoke the only Intervention which has not 



8s 

been, and which cannot be, rejected; — we need not, 
I say, look beyond the events of this single jubilee 
year of the Landing, to find evidence of the vanity 
of all human ambition and the impotence of all 
human power, and to see renewed and startling 
proof that while 

" A thousand years scarce serve to form a State, 
An hour may lay it in the dust." 

Let us not be deaf to the warnings of the Fathers. 
Let us not be insensible to the lessons of the hour. 
Let us resolve that no National growth or grandeur, 
no civil freedom or social prosperity or individual 
success, shall ever render us unmindful of those 
great principles of piety and virtue which the 
Pilgrims inculcated and exemplified. Let us 
resolve that whatever else this nation shall be, or 
shall fail to be, it shall still and always be a Christian 
Nation, in the full comprehensiveness and true sig- 
nificance of that glorious term, — its example ever 
on the side of Peace and Justice; its eagle, not 
only with the shield of Union and Liberty em- 
blazoned on its breast, but, like that of many 
a lectern of ancient cathedral or modern church, 
abroad or at home, ever proudly bearing up the 
open Bible on its outspread wings! And then, as 
year after year shall roll over our land, as jubilee 
shall succeed jubilee, and our children and our 



86 

children's children shall gather on this consecrated 
spot to celebrate the event which has brought us 
here to-day, those grand closing words of Webster 
fifty years ago — the only words worthy to sum up 
the emotions of an hour like this, and send them 
down all sparkling and blazing to the remotest 
posterity, — shall be repeated and repeated by 
those who shall successively stand where he then 
stood, and where I stand now, not with any feeble 
expectation or faltering hope only, but with that firm 
persuasion, that undoubting confidence, that assured 
trust and faith, with which I adopt and repeat 
them as the closing words of another Jubilee dis- 
course : — 

" Advance, then, }■ e future generations ! We 
would hail you, as you rise in your long succession 
to fill the places which we now fill, and to taste 
the blessings of existence where we are passing, 
and soon shall have passed, our own human dura- 
tion. We bid you welcome to this pleasant land of 
the Fathers. We bid you welcome to the healthful 
skies and the verdant fields of New England. We 
greet your accession to the great inheritance which 
we have enjoyed. We welcome you to the bless- 
ings of good government and religious libert}^ We 
welcome you to the treasures of science and the 
delights of learning. We welcome you to the 
transcendent sweets of domestic life, to the happi- 



87 

ness of kindred and parents and children. We 
welcome you to the immeasurable blessings of 
rational existence, the immortal hope of Christianity, 
and the light of everlasting truth ! " 



NOTE. 

(Page 36.) 

The following inscription in the Hall of the Bishop of London's 
Palace, at Fulhara, was copied for me most kindly by my vener- 
able friend Bishop McIlvaine, of Ohio : — 

" This Hall, with the adjoining quadrangle, was erected by Bishop 
Fitzjames in the reign of Henry VII. on the site of buildings of the old 
Palace as ancient as the Conquest. It was used as the Hall by Bisbop 
Bonner and Bishop Ridley, during the struggles of the Reformation, 
and retained its original proportions till it was altered by Bishop Sher- 
lock in the reign of George II. Bishop Howley, in the reign of 
George IV., changed it into a private unconsecrated Chapel. It is now 
restored to its original purpose on the erection by Bishop Tait of a 
new Chapel of more suitable dimensions. 
"A. D. 1866." 

The Palace must have been occupied by Richard Bancroft, 
during whose intolerant policy the Pilgrims fled to Holland ; as 
he was Bishop of Loudon for some years before becoming Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury. It must, also, have been occupied by 
Laud, from whose intolerance the Puritans suffered ; as he, after 
serving as Bishop of St. David's, and of Bath and Wells, was 
translated to London in 1G28, and continued in that See, exer- 
cising great influence over the ecclesiastical affairs of the realm, 
until he succeeded the more liberal Abbot as Primate of all 
England. 






^ ORATION 



Ctoo l£)unOreli anO JFiftirti) annftiecsarj? 



LANDING 



PILGRIM FATHERS AT PLYMOUTH. 



31 December, 1S70. 



o*. 



BY 



HON. ROBERT C. WINTHROP, LL.D., 

PRESIDENT OF THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 



BOSTON: 

PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON. 

1871. 



k 



